‘It took Patrick Hawthorne a long time to get rid of the metallic taste after the motorway pile-up that killed his wife and twenty-seven other people.’ As opening sentences go, this one certainly packs a punch.* Welcome to Gothard’s fourth book, ‘The Quietist’, a thoughtful study of grief, loss and the complexity of human feelings. […]
The best fiction is almost fact. The persecution in James’ novel is sadly familiar: a girl and a woman who others see as different from them becomes feared, reviled and hunted. Increasingly subjected to hate crimes and condemned without evidence, a mother and daughter struggle to clear their reputations in a town which is no […]
‘Little Bones’ by Sam Blake. I really wanted to love this. I’ve wanted to read it for ages: I’ve heard nothing but praise for the author, and the idea of a baby’s bones sewn into the hem of a wedding dress is disturbingly intriguing. I bought a copy for a friend, and was delighted when […]