Mrs Matisse by Sophie Haydock – blog tour

A novel about art, Paris and the South of France – and I’m sold! Mrs Matisse is Haydock’ second novel, after her first The Flames, (which I now have to read) took the lives of Austrian artist Egon Schiele’s women as its subject. As you might guess, Mrs Matisse is a novel about the French Read More

20 Books of Summer 21 #12 – Jonathan Lethem

The next two of my 20 Books of Summer 21 reads are both linked by being SF, but SF-ish, in that they are novels by literary authors who enjoy transcending genre and mixing things up. I was going to cover them both in one post – but wrote more than I intended on the first Read More

Graham Greene for the 1951 Club

The 1951 Club… …is the fourth in Simon and Karen’s reading years series – and I must say, I’m looking forward to the next decades!  1951 produced a plethora of books on my shelves. I could pick from Asimov, Bradbury or Wyndham in SF&F and there was Mitford’s Blessing, Du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel, Taylor’s A Read More

A tale of motherhood across generations…

The Confidantby Hélène Grémillon, translated by Alison Anderson I got a letter one day, a long letter that wasn’t signed. This was quite an event, because I’ve never received much mail in my life. My letter box had never done anything more than inform me that the-sea-was-warm or that the-snow-was-good, so I didn’t open it Read More