The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid – blogtour

Ii’m delighted to be one of the stops today on the blog tour for Mohsin Hamid’s new novel. If only The Last White Man wasn’t so thought-provoking to get some really coherent thoughts together, my head is buzzing with it still! I love novels that really make me think, like the previous ones by Hamid Read More

Finishing #Narniathon21 – The Last Battle

And so we reach the final book of CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia – the last to be published and the last chronologically. The Last Battle was also the first of my 20 Books of Summer, read at the beginning of June, and I’ve been mulling over how to approach writing about it ever since. Read More

A Most Curious Fable!

Lake of Urine: A Love Story by Guillermo Stitch To be honest, when originally offered a review copy of this novel some months ago, I nearly turned it down because of its title alone – which is so bizarre and off-putting, but there was something in the summary on the press release that nabbed me: Read More

Two novellas for WIT month

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly by Sun-Mi Hwang Translated by Chi-Young Kim, Illustrations by Nomoco This Korean novella has been a huge bestseller and it’s easy to see why. For a start, the cover is divine, the book is physically lovely with French flaps, and Nomoco’s illustrations preface each chapter. All that before you get Read More

“The extraordinary happens every day”

The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness Having wept like a baby during reading Ness’s last crossover novel, A Monster Calls (my review here) – a story about a young boy coming to terms with love, death and grief, and incorporating magical elements and fables, The Crane Wife – his first full adult novel seems a natural progression. The Crane Read More

Ancient Animal Antics

Kalila and Dimna: Fables of Friendship and Betrayal by Ramsay Wood The animal tales re-told in this volume originated in antiquity. Written in Sanskrit and known as the Panchatantra, they came out of India over 2000 years ago and were later absorbed into Persian and Arabic traditions. Told in five parts, this volume contains the first Read More

It’s good to share …

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip by George Saunders This is a charming tale for children of all ages – a wonderfully quirky novella, that has been matched by equally bizarre illustrations and produced as a singleton in a neat slim volume. Three families live in a hamlet called Frip. They all keep goats and Read More

This tale’s pinned on a donkey …

Caroline: A Mystery by Cornelius Medvei This short novel is a weird and wonderful thing, slightly surreal in parts, but utterly captivating. It is the story of Mr Shaw, who takes his family on their annual vacation where he tries to unwind from his day job in insurance, but is fretting internally (as is his Read More

“A story of literature and obsession”

The Paper House by Carlos Maria Dominguez, Translated by Nick Caistor This beautifully illustrated novella by Dominguez, an Argentinian author, is about people who are obsessed by books, and whose houses become libraries, (much like Gaskell Towers then, but I jest). It starts with a death… One day in the spring of 1998, Bluma Lennon bought Read More

Desert Island Books #2

Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Some may consider choosing an encyclopaedic dictionary a bit of a cheat, but I maintain that if you were on a desert island with no internet – there is no better book than Brewer’s for frequent dipping into for little nuggets of information. It is simply the original and Read More