Sibyl Sue Blue is a sergeant in the police, a mother and a widow. (Or is she?) When she cruises bars in disguise to picks up the information she needs, she manages to look decades younger than she really is with wigs and makeup (and by choosing rather dim men). She adroitly refuses advances from … Continue reading Sibyl Sue Blue
I pre-ordered Madeline Miller's Circe on learning its publication date, and then couldn't bear to read it for months in case it turned out to be not as good as I wanted it to be. I loved loved loved her The Song of Achilles, so I was hoping for great things of this second novel, more … Continue reading Madeline Miller’s Circe
I pounced on this short story collection in a second-hand bookshop in the Lanes in Brighton, silently crying 'Why have I never heard of you before?' (and on typing that I realised that I really must, MUST join the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society, and did so.) I hadn't paid enough attention to STW's short story … Continue reading Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Music at Long Verney
The blurb on the back on the Panther edition promises titillation in rather 1970s Observer fashion: 'Perhaps you'd better find out what those fairies are up to at the bottom of your garden ...', assuming (a) that you have a garden, and (b) supervision of it is something you will be held to account for. … Continue reading Maureen Duffy, The Erotic World of Faery
This novel was hypnotically uncomfortable to read, but also so rich in detail, colour, life, event, that I couldn't help but keep going. I know a great deal more about modern Cairo than I did before, and I think I understand more of the horrific nature of Egyptian social and political corruption that brought about … Continue reading Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building
Inez Holden was a journalist, and a friend or a colleague of most of the literary giants of the middle of the twentieth century, as well as a former lover of George Orwell. I’ve been reading her Second World War writing, and have been thoroughly intrigued by her novel There’s No Story There (1944), which … Continue reading Inez Holden, There’s No Story There
In the seventeenth century, in the French countryside, an automaton called Rupetta is created. She has a psychic connection with her Wynder, the woman of the family who created her, who reaches into her chest to touch the mechanics of her silver and leather heart, and for whom she feels a great and powerful love. … Continue reading N K Sulway, Rupetta
