Margaret Irwin’s Elizabeth novels

I bought a nice Reprint Society copy of Margaret Irwin’s Elizabeth, Captive Princess (1948) on my last trip to Hay on Wye, wanting to read it again after forty years or so. It’s very good, if a little expositional: she dumps information skilfully into the narrative through character dialogue, which means she sometimes moves her … Continue reading Margaret Irwin’s Elizabeth novels →

Harold Nicolson, Public Faces

Serendipity strikes again. I've been editing a book Handheld will be publishing in September 2023, about Hilda Matheson, who was among many other things a lover of Vita Sackville-West, and the Director of Talks for the BBC from 1926 to 1931, for whom Vita and Harold Nicolson, her husband, did online live broadcasts. BBC Director-General … Continue reading Harold Nicolson, Public Faces →

A mixed bag

Some great, many good, two absolute stinkers. Ngaio Marsh, Grave Mistake I have no memory of ever reading this, yet it's got a record in my reading diary from thirteen years ago so I'm obviously getting old and forgetful. It's VERY good: a classic whodunnit set in the 1970s in an English country village and … Continue reading A mixed bag →

The Good Books of 2022

New to me The First Woman, by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi from 2020 was a stunning read, a brilliant novel about modern Ugandan history and social change. When Kirabo is in her teens, her father decides that she will come to live with him in the city, and Kirabo is wildly excited because her father is … Continue reading The Good Books of 2022 →

Books I Want To Keep

I have read so many duds and books recently that I gave up on because their meh factor was way too high. These are the pearls in a bit of a swamp, the ones I actually finished. Bea Howe, Lady With The Green Fingers. The Life of Jane Loudon I rather unfairly only think of … Continue reading Books I Want To Keep →

Becky Chambers, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, which I found completely delightful, is the fourth of Becky Chambers’ Wayfarer novels. The first novel in the group, The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet (2014), initially funded by a Kickstarter campaign, was nominated for six literary prizes, including the Arthur C Clarke Award and the Women’s … Continue reading Becky Chambers, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within →

Oriel Malet, My Bird Sings

Oriel Malet's name has been wafting past my attention now for years, probably decades, and I've never paid much attention to her before now, which is a bit shocking. She was an accomplished novelist, Welsh, from a titled family, and her second novel, My Bird Sings, won the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize in 1946, and … Continue reading Oriel Malet, My Bird Sings →

More good books

Books that have shone out during my recent long run of duds as being really splendid reads, giving me faith that good books are out there if you keep at it long enough. Gossamer Years This is the revised translation by Edward Seidensticker from 1960 of a nameless 10th-century Japanese noblewoman’s complaints about her very … Continue reading More good books →

Strange Horizons

From time to time I review books in the online science fiction & fantasy magazine Strange Horizons. I was impressed, but not in a good way, about Paul Kincaid's new study of Brian Aldiss. Kincaid: good. Aldiss: awful. I reviewed the new edition of J D Beresford's fascinating Edwardian pandemic novel A World Of Women. … Continue reading Strange Horizons →

I Have Doubts

More sour remarks about books I tried and found wanting. Hugh Walpole, Portrait of a Man with Red Hair This 1925 novel pops up regularly in lists about the supernatural canon as a gem of twentieth-century Gothic horror. It is certainly horrifying, but it’s a novella stretched out painfully beyond the natural length of its … Continue reading I Have Doubts →