Jon is a public servant in Westminster who hates his job. He’s just left his wife – who was having an affair – and struggles to be a decent father to his daughter. In his spare time he writes love letters (for...
Read MoreDo Not Say We Have Nothing is an overlong multi-generational saga mostly set in China that deals with more than 60 years of the country’s history, starting with 1949’s Communist Revolution moving onto the Cultural...
Read MoreIt’s been pointed out to me that this isn’t the best place to start with Coetzee. Not just because this is the second book in a planned trilogy (the first novel being The Childhood of Jesus) but because Coetzee, with...
Read MoreGraeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project is a historical crime novel, set in the 1860s, that takes place, for the most part, in Culduie, a small hamlet in the Scottish Highlands. Through the medium of found documents,...
Read MoreIt’s bad form when a reviewer critiques a novel for not being the book her or she wanted. Unprofessional even. And yet here I am writing a critique that does precisely that. It’s not my fault though. I blame...
Read MoreWyl Menmuir’s The Many is a frustrating read in as much as you can see what the author was striving for – grief explored through dream and symbolism – but fails to reach the mark. The bulk of the action takes...
Read MoreDavid Szalay’s All That Man Is isn’t so much a novel* as a suite of nine novelettes. What connects these novelettes isn’t a character – although there is a genetic connection between the protagonists of...
Read MoreIn My Name Is Lucy Barton, the titular character ruminates about her less than pristine childhood in Amgash, Illinois. The catalyst for these memories is a prolonged stay at the hospital in the early 80s where Lucy, suffering...
Read More“Hystopia” is the name Eugene Allen gives to his war novel, an attempt to work through the trauma he experienced during the Vietnam War. But before we even begin “Hystopia”, the reader is provided with a...
Read MoreSofia is a twenty-something who works as a Barista in the UK and spends most of her free time looking after her ailing mother Rose. They’ve headed to Spain, the setting for 90% of the novel, so Rose can visit the clinic of...
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