Thirty-four pages into this excellent Irish novel, I was cackling with laughter for the third time. I was also being paused in my happy reading by moments of piercing empathy. They sat alongside the bursts of humour, deepening the reader’s feelings about the characters and their patient, ordinary lives. The cover shows us a sunfish, … Continue reading Rónán Hession, Leonard and Hungry Paul
Category: bildungsroman
Margaret Kennedy, The Ladies of Lyndon
I read this in a Dial Press edition of the Virago reprint, with Nicola Beauman's sound introduction from 1981. It is the most satisfying English society novel I've read in a long time, yet is also flawed in its last third with too much exposition, as if Kennedy (this was her first novel) did not … Continue reading Margaret Kennedy, The Ladies of Lyndon
Becky Chambers space happiness
I bought the second Becky Chambers novel first - A Closed and Common Orbit - and that was a mistake, because the first page was so fascinating, yet so obviously needing the back story before I could continue, that I had to find the first novel - The Long Way to A Small Angry Planet … Continue reading Becky Chambers space happiness
Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling
Shall I count the ways in which I love this novel? It's a joy to read, easy and deep and delightful. It made me cry. I bought it on holiday and I loved it. It's snort-out-loud funny. It's utterly fascinating if you're not 28 and not from Ireland, like discovering a world of linguistic delights. … Continue reading Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling
Xan Brooks, The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times
This novel annoyed me so much, for its ignorance, or wilful avoidance, of historical accuracy and plausibility. But, if it isn't historical fiction, then it's a deeply uncomfortable read because of its implausibility: we are reading about the systematised prostitution of children in a fantasical story about physical damage in a brutalised society. Some reviewers … Continue reading Xan Brooks, The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times
H G Wells is aggravating again: The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman was published in 1914, and is the story of Ellen Sawbridge who marries her older suitor Isaac Harman when she is 18. He delays the wedding by a few weeks so that the announcement of his knighthood in the Birthday Honours will appear on their wedding day, making her … Continue reading H G Wells is aggravating again: The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage
I was surprised by quite how much I wanted to read Philip Pullman’s next Lyra novels. Reading Northern Lights, The Amber Spyglass and The Subtle Knife when they came out twenty years ago was rather an ordeal for me, as I don’t much enjoy stories about children in danger, struggling to survive. But I devoured them, … Continue reading Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage
Rumer Godden, The Greengage Summer
This 1958 novel crackles with foreboding. It is based on the apparently artless retelling by a teenage girl of a summer spent in France with her elder sister and their younger siblings. It seethes with barely understood sexuality, and, in the absence of any reliable and responsible adults, the dangers that Joss and her sister … Continue reading Rumer Godden, The Greengage Summer
The Labour Church
I'd long been aware that the later 19th century in Britain had been a ferment of belief systems reinventing themselves, often within the Christian church. Some time ago I reviewed a marvellous book about utopian communities, Utopia Britannica, that pokes around in the wilder fringes of community living and pseudo-religious invention. Many novels of the … Continue reading The Labour Church
The 2017 Vondel Prize
The Vondel Translation Prize - a bi-annual prize established by the Society of Authors - has been awarded to the American translator David McKay, the translator of Stefan Hertmans' novel Oorlog en Turpentijn / War and Turpentine. It's set during before, during and after the First World War, in Flanders and is based on the … Continue reading The 2017 Vondel Prize
