“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
“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
Liz Jensen is an author I admire, so when in a recent piece for creative writing journal Mslexia she urged subscribers to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Speckled Band, I determined to do exactly that. As you might guess it‘s a Sherlock Holmes adventure, the first I’ve ever read, though I’d … More The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley, a Manx smuggler. The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson, a country parson. Jack Harp, an escaped convict. Peevay, a mixed-race aborigine. Dr Thomas Potter, a race-supremacy theorist. Timothy Renshaw, a reluctant botanist. These are just some of the colourful characters that narrate this extraordinary book. Spanning a period of fifty years, from … More English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
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