Kathleen Jamie is a poet, but it's a curious thing: she never speaks about her poetry in her essays. I've read and reread her earlier collections Findings and Sightlines, and I've drenched myself in her new essays in Surfacing now a couple of times, but it's only just occurred to me that if you only come to Jamie … Continue reading Kathleen Jamie, Surfacing
M C Bolitho, A Victorian Lady in the Himalayas, edited by Jean Burnett Jean Burnett is part of Writers Unchained, a collective of writers from Bristol, and has published novels with Little, Brown about the adventures of Lydia Bennett. She has edited the diary of Maria Bolitho, a Victorian Englishwoman who travelled across the Himalayas … Continue reading Enjoyed, with caveats
The Flint Anchor was published in 1954, six years after The Corner That Held Them. Both novels are the fruits of Sylvia Townsend Warner's cultivation of a dispassionate attention to the passing of time, and a refusal to show a narrative attachment to any one character. This was not conducive to my teenage reading, so I'm … Continue reading Sylvia Townsend Warner, The Flint Anchor
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
In which I agree with the universal acclaim for two hugely hyped books that show no signs of losing any popularity. Mary Beard, Women & Power Mary Beard is doing very nicely out of her television presenting work because (a) she’s being herself, unaffected and normal, and (b) she’s writing some well-received books about that … Continue reading Believe the hype
The latest in a series of unexpectedly popular posts in which I complain about books I haven’t enjoyed, and why. Links to earlier editions are at the end. Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger I’ve had a copy of Lively's Booker-winning Moon Tiger for ages, and had to steel myself to read it, with some reluctance. I don’t usually … Continue reading Three small duds
This Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up is about Ernest Hemingway's Islands in the Stream. He is a giant of American literature, and of masculine writing. He wrote men’s books about manly subjects: war, bullfighting, deep sea fishing. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Islands in the Stream was published after his … Continue reading Ernest Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream
