An Unsuitable Attachment is Barbara Pym's seventh novel. She sent it to her usual publisher, Jonathan Cape, in February 1963, and to her embarrassment and distress they rejected it, and her, as being too behind the times, no longer likely to sell. Her confidant Philip Larkin was as annoyed as she was, but she wouldn't … Continue reading Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment
This very good autobiography by one of our great biographers has a truly terrible photograph of herself on the cover. Claire Tomalin looks tired, as if she's not been looking after herself; she's irritated and preoccupied, but also patient. This is the face of a woman who had recently been widowed, with four children to … Continue reading Claire Tomalin, A Life of My Own
For a change, here are three books I've read recently that I liked a lot. They are all satisfying, well-crafted reads, and I'm going to keep them all, but I don't have vast amounts to say about them other than 'they're good'. Mary Stewart, Thornyhold Mary Stewart writes about magic so convincingly that there must … Continue reading Three good books
The Mere Wife, by Maria Dahvana Headley I didn’t finish this. I got to the bit where the character in the Hrothgar role got killed, and the character in the Beowulf role is in a car with the character in the Wealtheow role, considering kissing her. I did not want to read on because the … Continue reading My gifts to the Oxfam bookshop
Two mini reviews of science fiction and fantasy novels by Canadian writers, of Sylvain Neuvel's Sleeping Giants, and Nicholas Eames' Bloody Rose. Sleeping Giants I enjoyed this a LOT. Partly it was the plot: gigantic metallic pieces of what appears to be a body are found buried in remote, and less remote, locations on Earth. … Continue reading Canadian sff: Sleeping Giants, and Bloody Rose
In 1959, Peter Haring Judd became a history teacher in a secondary school in Maidaguri, the capital of Bornu province in northern Nigeria. He had completed his US military service and was looking for something to do with his life that the Peace Corps, to be founded two years later, would offer younger generations of … Continue reading Peter Haring Judd, Figures in a Spare Landscape
Odd title, that. Who lies sleeping, exactly? It's the latest Peter Grant / Rivers of London novel, and I gobbled it up over three evenings. But though I enjoyed it, and it had (at the beginning) the potential to be one of the really rock-solid, hard-hitting novels in the series, like Broken Homes, for instance, … Continue reading Ben Aaronovitch, Lies Sleeping
