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“She would never have an ordinary day again”
Colm Tóibín‘s new novel, Brooklyn, is a deceptively simple story of one young woman packed off to Brooklyn in the 1950s. Eilis Lacey is a younger daughter with no firm prospects for either work or...
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Review: Lalia Lalami’s Secret Son
I loved Lalia Lalami’s first book, Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits. It’s either a novel or a collection of linked short stories — I’ve seen it called both — about four young Moroccans’ individual...
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Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society Wins Indies Choice Award
The inaugural Indies Choice Book Awards winners have been announced, and one of my favorites took the top fiction spot, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie...
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The Graveyard Book wins the Indies Choice Award for YA
And in the Indies Choice YA category, Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book overcame Cory Doctorow’s excellent Little Brother. Here’s how I handsell The Graveyard Book: In this colorful tale — essentially a...
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Why I Love the Booker Prize
The Booker Prize is my favorite literary award. My annual goal is always to read the whole of the Booker longlist before the winner is announced. I never achieve that goal, but then the purpose of...
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If Everything Seems Lost… Trust the Heart.
Sarah Hall’s Booker-nominee How to Paint a Dead Man is brilliant, there’s really no other word for it. It’s also idiosyncratic like only great art can be, and is likely to be something of a love it or...
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Peace by Richard Bausch
The news that Richard Bausch has been award a Dayton Literary Peace Prize for his novel Peace, made me dig through the archives for the blurb I wrote for it last year. Peace is the intense story of the...
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A Great Historical Novel for Middle Grade Readers
Review: Countdown by Deborah Wiles Franny Chapman is eleven and her world is falling apart. The world is transfixed by the Cuban Missile Crisis. They have nuclear attack drills at school, her Uncle is...
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Martin Millar’s Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation
Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation was Martin Millar’s first published novel. In the US, it appears that we are getting Millar’s books in something like a reverse order, starting with the brilliant The...
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Review: Notes from a Coma
Notes from a Coma by Mike McCormack (US cover: Soho Press, 2013) Notes from a Coma by Mike McCormack is a fantastic and unusual novel that strives to break many of the ‘rules’ of novel writing and gets...
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