If you enjoy ambiguity and unreliable narrators, you’ll love this. ‘The Girl on the Stairs’ is Louise Welsh’s fifth novel but the first I’ve read (thanks book group!). After this, I’ll definitely be checking out her back catalogue. What’s it about? Heavily pregnant Jane has just moved to Berlin with her Lebenspartner. While Petra works, […]
Being sentenced to die is tough. Waiting for the sentence to be carried out is even tougher. Hannah Kent’s intriguing debut novel ‘Burial Rites’ focuses on one woman’s experience of this difficult time. What’s it about? Our perceptions of people and the power of story-telling. Agnes Magnúsdóttir has been condemned to die for her part […]
When your job involves recommending books to young people, it’s a good idea to read at least a few of the more popular YA books, which is why I read Suzanne Collins’ ‘The Hunger Games’. What’s it about? Sometime in a dystopian future, North America has been divided into twelve districts and the Capitol. As […]
Blurbs can be tricky things: they often reveal too much, but sometimes they hint too little at key aspects of the tale within. Having recently read and mostly enjoyed Gillian Flynn’s thriller ‘Gone Girl’ I was keen to explore her back catalogue. ‘Sharp Objects’ is her debut novel – and it’s even darker than the […]
Sometimes, our reading choices benefit from external guidance. I began reading ‘The Siege’ out of a vague sense of obligation; I ended it with a sense of gratitude – to the author, who made what could have been Yet Another War Story beautiful and genuinely moving, and to the acquaintance who insisted I would enjoy […]
Why would a teenage girl deliberately step in front of a bus? It’s obvious that a fiction book called ‘The Accident’ and marketed as a suspense thriller is going to be about something more chilling than a simple accident, and so it proved with C. L. Taylor’s crime debut. The premise Sue Jackson is horrified […]
The only thing I love more than books are books about other books. Jasper Fforde obviously shares my feelings; he has created two series with a distinctive literary bent, one following the adventures of Literary Detective Thursday Next, the other called ‘The Nursery Crimes’. Both involve the intermingling of fictional and, er, differently fictional characters. […]
Secrets. Everyone has at least one. But would yours destroy your marriage? In an instance of pure serendipity, this month’s book group choice was one I had recently placed on my wish list, so I was glad to get the opportunity to try-before-you-buy. What’s it about? Cecilia finds a letter that isn’t meant to be […]
Comedies are tricky things. Jokes or conceits that I find simply dull, you may find hilarious – or offensive. I remember loathing ‘A short history of tractors in Ukrainan’ despite it being universally feted as a ‘jolly romp’ and I found that ‘Then we came to the End’ – supposedly a satire of modern office-life […]
Recently, I read ‘The Family’, a story which the blurb claims will ‘hook you in from the very first page, and keep you there til the very last’. Unfortunately, I found the opposite to be true: during the month I had this book, I found myself reading almost anything else, and it was a real […]