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 first remember hearing about Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath in an English lesson after reading an extract from Plath’s The Bell Jar. I was sweet sixteen, it was an all-girls school, and my teacher was young, female, and romantic; Ted Hughes (we all agreed) was not a nice man. Thirty years on, I’m old … More Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
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
“When my mother was angry with me, which was often, she said, ‘The Devil led us to the wrong crib.’” This is how the memoir begins. Entirely fitting, giving over the opening line to “Mrs Winterson” (as she’s more frequently referred to, not mother) because the over-riding influence on JW’s life would seem to be … More Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? 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 have an uncle who fancies himself as well-read – with some justification, I’ll admit. I studied English Language and Literature at a good university, and had to learn Anglo-Saxon to read the Anglo-Saxon chronicle in the original, but graduating without even opening Beowulf? That left him underwhelmed. Heaney’s translation, which won the Whitbread Book … More Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney
You might remember Matisse (and others) hitting the headlines in November with the discovery of a hoard of Nazi-confiscated artworks. At the time I was already reading this biography, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 2005. It was a difficult book to settle into and not because eight years and several … More Matisse the Master – A Life of Henri Matisse: Volume 2, 1909-1954 by Hilary Spurling
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