Jane Austen knew what she was doing when she made the relationship between sisters central to her novels. Elizabeth Bennet needs Jane’s gentle reminders that people are capable of more than Lizzy is minded to give them credit for, and Jane needs periodic, pragmatic dousing with Lizzy’s realism. Marianne and Elinor are even more obviously […]
Are you ready to go on an adventure? 69 year old Yorkshireman Arthur Pepper isn’t. Since his wife died exactly one year ago, he’s clung to his routines and his house plant like life rafts and gradually lost meaningful contact with his children and the outside world. Then a chance discovery awakens a questing spirit […]
Delays at the dentist? Traffic on the tube? It must be bonus reading time. Bonus reading time is what happens when you’re meant to be doing something else but there’s a hiccup and instead you get to read. This is why I always keep a book in my bag; you never know when you might […]
What if the past didn’t happen the way you thought it did? What if you could dig up the truth? Would you want to? Should you? What might you learn if you did? Such is the premise of Harlan Coben’s seventeenth crime novel, ‘The Woods’. What’s it about? Twenty years ago four teenagers enjoying summer […]
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 […]
When I learned that Maggie O’Farrell would be speaking at my local library I immediately resolved to reread her debut novel, ‘After You’d Gone’*. What’s it about? Alice Raikes randomly boards a train from London to Edinburgh, thinking she will visit her family. Almost as soon as she arrives, she sees something that stuns her […]