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Tag: Family

The Accidental by Ali Smith

21/02/2020

My Uncle Bobbie died just over a year ago. I’ve spent some time recently sorting through his old 78” records. He had a lovely singing voice in his day and for many years was a compere and singer at his local parish club.  Unsurprisingly his old records reflect the music he most liked to sing: … More The Accidental by Ali Smith

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The Cut Out Girl by Bart Van Es

25/10/2019

‘Without families you don’t get stories.’ At the time of writing I’m on holiday on Corfu. In normal life my brain is chock-full of jobs-to-do but on holiday I have time to think, which isn’t always a good thing.  One night (admittedly after several glasses of the local wine) I got upset about not having … More The Cut Out Girl by Bart Van Es

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Somewhere Towards The End by Diana Athill

19/07/2019

Biographies are like busses, you wait for one for ages then three come along at once… My Uncle Bobbie died earlier this year just under two weeks before his 96th birthday.  It seems strange to refer to the death of a nonagenarian as a shock, but it was, because he wasn’t ill. On the morning … More Somewhere Towards The End by Diana Athill

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Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

18/01/2019

My Dad was a big fan of Westerns.  I grew up watching The High Chaparral and A Man Called Horse; by the time I was five I was hooked. I named a teddy bear Blue Boy (after the character Billy Blue Cannon in The High Chaparral) and wrote a letter to Santa promising to be … More Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

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The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell

18/02/2017

Once bitten, twice shy? If you’ve read my earlier review of O’Farrell’s Instructions on a Heat Wave you’ll know it wasn’t for me.  Still I’m all for second chances, and having been told by a member of my book group that The Hand That First Held Mine was better – it won the 2010 Costa … More The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell

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The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

31/12/2016

My RE teacher relished moral dilemmas.  She’d take a Commandment, thou shalt not kill, or thou shalt not bear false witness, say, and then question us to explore their outer limits. Would you murder one person to save the lives of many? Would you lie to hide a painful truth? Faith Sunderly, the teenage heroine … More The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

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Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

03/07/2015

Several years ago, out of the blue, my big sister got an e-mail from a man called Jim who lived in Australia and happened to be a second cousin we didn’t know we had.  Jim was researching the Nesbitt family tree, and one of its branches led him to us in England. Other branches led … More Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

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Reviews

  • Love Is Blind by William Boyd
  • Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (translated by Marilyn Booth)
  • Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
  • The Destiny Waltz by Gerda Charles
  • The Bird of Night by Susan Hill
  • Footnotes – A Journey Round Britain in the Company of Great Writers by Peter Fiennes
  • The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
  • Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
  • The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
  • Every Man For Himself by Beryl Bainbridge
  • The Accidental by Ali Smith
  • The Reservoir Tapes by Jon McGregor
  • 10 Best Novels of the Decade: 2010 to 2019
  • Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
  • Emily Dickinson – poems selected by Ted Hughes
  • The Cut Out Girl by Bart Van Es
  • Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley
  • Milkman by Anna Burns
  • Somewhere Towards The End by Diana Athill
  • The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein
  • A Life of Picasso Volume 1: 1881 – 1906 by John Richardson
  • Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Jennifer Croft)
  • Swing Hammer Swing! by Jeff Torrington
  • Theory of War by Joan Brady
  • Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
  • A Good Man In Africa by William Boyd
  • Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
  • The Vegetarian by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith)
  • Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
  • Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
  • Docherty by William McIlvanney
  • Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore
  • How Far Can You Go by David Lodge
  • Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
  • A Horse Walks Into A Bar by David Grossman (translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen)
  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
  • The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth
  • Doctor Copernicus by John Banville
  • Bluebeard’s Egg and Other Stories by Margaret Atwood
  • The Sellout by Paul Beatty
  • The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
  • Under the Eye of the Clock by Christopher Nolan
  • How To Be Both by Ali Smith
  • An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • The Comforts of Madness by Paul Sayer
  • Coleridge: Early Visions by Richard Holmes
  • The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell
  • The Tent by Margaret Atwood
  • The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

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