My mother once told me you only ever find out what someone is really like when they come into money unexpectedly. I guess mum’s point was that a sudden windfall shines a spotlight on whether a person is generous by nature or only interested in number one. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately … More The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
When I was in sixth form, studying for ‘A’ levels, my physics class had two teachers. Let’s call them Mrs M and Miss C. Neither seemed to know how to teach and they each had a technique for dealing with questions from the class. Mrs M, who never moved off her lab-stool, not even when … More The Destiny Waltz by Gerda Charles
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
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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