When Instructions for a Heatwave appeared on my book club’s reading long list, I made sure it got shortlisted. O’Farrell had won the Costa Novel award in 2010 with The Hand that First Held Mine and the blurb for Instructions appealed to me: it’s set in July 1976 and although I was only nine at … More Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell
Is it odd for a publisher of women’s writing to share their name with the woman Pluto abducted? Persephone certainly seems to think so; their website goes to the trouble of saying they chose the name without knowing the legend behind it – or (by implication) taking the trouble to look it up. So Persephone, … More The Persephone Book of Short Stories
“The wall-eyed nurse came back.” That’s how it began, an extract of The Bell Jar my English teacher handed out for us to study. That single image made such a deep impression on me as a sixteen-year-old that, thirty years on, I still remember it. Before term was over I’d sought out and read the … More The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
I read Hill’s brilliantly chilling The Woman in Black a few years ago before going to see the excellent stage adaptation so was delighted to find this book in my Christmas stocking. Eight year old Edward Cayley and his ‘wayward’ nine year old cousin Leonora are sent to spend a summer with their widowed Aunt … More Dolly: A Ghost Story by Susan Hill
Reading Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? led me back to this book. Oranges was published in 1985, winning the Whitbread Award for First Novel. In the summer of ’85 I sat my ‘A’ levels, finished school, and was getting ready to move out of my home, away from my friends and my … More Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
I’ve explained elsewhere in this blog that when my hubby gets an idea into his head it can be difficult to shift. Like the idea that because I’ve read and enjoyed Barry Unsworth’s later novels (1980 onwards) I’ll obviously be gasping to read his entire back catalogue. That sounds ungrateful. I don’t mean to be. … More Mooncranker’s Gift by Barry Unsworth
“I write less implicitly, more explicitly, if you understand the distinction, but not so well,” writes the main character Frances, an eighty-something novelist, on how her writing style has changed over the years. If Chalcot Crescent is anything to go by the same could be said of Weldon herself. The plot premise is vintage Weldon, … More Chalcot Crescent by Fay Weldon
Bring Up the Bodies won both the Man Booker prize and the Costa Book of the Year in 2012, and is the sequel to Wolf Hall, which itself carried off the Man Booker Prize in 2009. It continues the story of Thomas Cromwell, Secretary to King Henry VIII. Henry is tiring of Anne Boleyn and … More Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
When I wrote about book groups in my last entry I forgot to say that when they work well you might just discover something marvellous, an unlooked for gem, an unsuspected treasure that otherwise you’d have missed. Grace and Mary is a case in point. Two weeks ago I associated Melvyn Bragg with the South … More Grace and Mary by Melvyn Bragg
I’m not a big fan of book groups. Or rather, like a lot of things, they look good on paper but don’t work that well in real life. Reading and talking about a book are two different skills. Book group members are often good at the former but not so good at the latter, so … More Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
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