Lily Owens yearns for her mother. Unfortunately, not only is her mother dead, but Lily believes she killed her. Trapped on a peach farm in South Carolina with her abusive father, T-Ray, Lily longs to become a writer, but can’t imagine how her life will ever amount to anything. One hot July day, inspired by […]
If you could make yourself smarter, would you? What if your only option to achieve this was by allowing doctors to operate on your brain? And what if those same doctors openly admitted that this was an experimental technique and might not work? What might the consequences be, for your health, your sense of self […]
I LOVED this book. ‘The One Memory of Flora Banks’ features an unreliable narrator, a touching coming of age tale and a bit of a mystery. What’s it about? Flora is 17 and has retrograde amnesia as a result of a brain tumour she had removed when she was ten. This means she is unable […]
Some books you choose; some books choose you. ‘The Lonely Life of Biddy Weir’ chose me; there’s no doubt about that. It wasn’t a book that held an immediate appeal for me, perhaps because the slightly odd name of the protagonist suggested a dated storyline, perhaps because of the floral cover design, or perhaps simply […]
I’m aware that much of what I read is, let’s say, comfortable. In particular, I read a lot of crime fiction, especially psychological crime, frequently featuring middle class women doing rather middle class things. (I’m even sure ‘rather’ is quite a middle class word, now I come to think about it.) Even when they’re transplanted […]
Don’t judge this book by its seriously creepy cover. (Seriously. Creepy.) If you did, you might miss out on a treat. What’s it about? 13 year old Harriet is trying hard to grow up. Her reluctant entrance into adolescence is made worse by her parents’ reactions to her long-dead brother: her father has moved away, […]
Dowd’s first novel, ‘A Swift Pure Cry’, was published in 2006 and received an extremely positive reception. It won the 2007 Branford Boase Award and the Eilis Dillon Award, and it was short listed for the Carnegie Medal and the Booktrust Teenage Prize. Her second novel was also very well received, so when I tentatively […]