Tag Archives: Fiction
January 5, 2025 · 4:34 pm
It’s that time of year again… here are my favourite books I read in 2024.
I usually read more non-fiction these days and 2024 was an excellent year for memoirs. My Family: The Memoir by David Baddiel is a pretty much perfect blend of comedy and empathy about his dysfunctional parents. Knife by Salman Rushdie is a frank account of the near-fatal attack the author suffered in 2022 at a literary event and My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss is about the author’s eating disorder which saw her relapse during the pandemic.
From 2022, Original Sins by Matt Rowland Hill is an extremely candid memoir about his evangelical Baptist upbringing in south Wales and substance abuse as an adult. Ruskin Park by Rory Cellan Jones is a very affecting book about how his parents met in the 1950s while working at the BBC and Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart is an astutely observed political memoir about the nine years he spent as an MP and government minister.
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Tagged as 2024, Book, Book Awards, Book Review, Book Reviews, Booker Prize, Books of the Year, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Non fiction, Novels, Reading, Translated Fiction
January 4, 2025 · 3:13 pm
It is inevitable that You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here by Dr Benji Waterhouse will be compared to This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay. Waterhouse does for the field of psychiatry what Kay did for obstetrics and gynaecology, describing the harsh reality of working in NHS hospitals with dark gallows humour while making serious points about underfunding, bed shortages and staff burnout. The nature of serious psychiatric illness poses diagnostic challenges, particularly when patients can’t report their own symptoms and believe that they are werewolves or about to marry Harry Styles, and Waterhouse quickly finds the system is too overwhelmed to provide compassionate care. As well as portraits of colleagues and patients, Waterhouse also navigates the sources of his own anxiety and dysfunctional family issues. He still works for the NHS alongside gigs as a stand-up comedian, and he deploys humour with great effect in his insightful book about the mental health crisis. Many thanks to Random House Vintage Books for sending me a review copy via NetGalley. Continue reading →
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Tagged as Benji Waterhouse, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Christian Kracht, Fiction, Non fiction, Novels, Reading, Reviews, Sarah Rainsford, Tim Robey, Translated Fiction
December 21, 2024 · 4:42 pm
Impossible City by Simon Kuper is an expat’s view of Parisian society in the 21st century and how it has changed over the last two decades. Kuper bought an apartment in Paris in 2000 and still lives in the French capital with his American wife and their three children. From the point of view of a middle-class British journalist, Kuper outlines the mysterious codes which dictate how Parisians socialise, and the chapters about elitism and the rise of Emmanuel Macron are particularly fascinating (Kuper is the author of a book called ‘Chums’ about similar networks in the UK). ‘Impossible City’ also covers changes to the city’s infrastructure ahead of hosting the Olympic Games last summer, and the impact of the terrorist attacks in 2015 and the pandemic. Brexit prompted Kuper to finally apply for French citizenship, and ‘Impossible City’ is a fond but not overly romanticised portrait of Paris told with dry humour. Continue reading →
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Tagged as Andrew Hunter Murray, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Catherine Coldstream, David Hepworth, Fiction, France, Non fiction, Novels, Reading, Reviews, Simon Kuper
November 26, 2024 · 7:51 pm
Lives of the Wives by Carmela Ciuraru outlines the tempestuous relationships and careers of five literary couples: Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge, Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia, Kenneth Tynan and Elaine Dundy, Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard, and Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal. I knew a bit about Kingsley Amis and Roald Dahl already, but very little about the others, and the brief portraits in ‘Lives of the Wives’ provide a solid overview of their careers. As a group biography though, I think there needed to be a more central hook that linked the couples more coherently together, or at least some analysis that’s a little more groundbreaking than the revelation that creativity and ego usually put strain on marriages.
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Tagged as Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Carmela Ciuraru, Fiction, Graeme Macrae Burnet, Non fiction, Novels, Peter Ross, Reading, Reviews, Sally Rooney
October 27, 2024 · 11:48 am
Ruskin Park by Rory Cellan-Jones is the former BBC journalist’s memoir about how his parents met in the 1950s. His mother, Sylvia, was separated from her first husband and worked at the BBC as a secretary. She had a brief affair with James Cellan Jones, a producer who was 15 years her junior. When Sylvia found out she was pregnant at the age of 42, James abandoned her and didn’t meet his son until 23 years later. Two decades after her death in 1996, Cellan-Jones sifted through 60 years’ worth of his mother’s correspondence to piece together what happened at the time of his birth and why. The letters present both a social history of mid 20th-century Britain and a gripping personal story about the challenges of being a single parent in a south London council flat in the 1960s. Readers who enjoy family memoirs in the vein of Romany and Tom by Ben Watt will definitely enjoy ‘Ruskin Park’ which is a moving and compassionately written book.
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Tagged as Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Fiction, Hannah Barnes, Non fiction, Novels, Reading, Reviews, Rory Cellan Jones, Sarah Perry
September 25, 2024 · 6:30 pm
My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss is a memoir about the author’s eating disorder which developed during her childhood with a serious relapse during the pandemic. I have enjoyed reading several novels by Moss over the years which often deal with food and illness, and her latest memoir is a complex account about these themes and also addresses control, memory and unreliable narrators. She writes about her emotionally neglectful childhood in Manchester and the books she sought solace in, with some analysis of their depictions of food and femininity. ‘My Good Bright Wolf’ is mostly written in the second person, an unusual style for a memoir and a very powerful one too. The prose is intercut with Moss often berating herself, which sometimes felt relentless and intrusive to read but is very effective at showing the mental toll of anorexia. Many thanks to Pan Macmillan for sending me a review copy via NetGalley. Continue reading →
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Tagged as Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Booker Prize, Booker Prize 2023, Craig Brown, Fiction, Non fiction, Novels, Paul Lynch, Reading, Reviews, Rory Stewart, Sarah Moss
August 21, 2024 · 6:25 pm
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year and is even more impressive than his second novel Skippy Dies which I read last year. It is a portrait of the Barnes family who live in a small Irish town and have fallen on hard times following the financial crash in 2008. Dickie Barnes runs a car dealership which he inherited from his father Maurice. His marriage to town beauty Imelda is also in trouble. Their teenage daughter Cass is aiming to go to Trinity College Dublin and their 12-year-old son PJ is obsessed with video games.
As demonstrated in ‘Skippy Dies’, Murray is excellent at writing accurate teenage dialogue, although I was a bit less convinced by the absence of punctuation in Imelda’s section, which supposedly reflects her desperation and how her mind works. ‘The Bee Sting’ is less comic than ‘Skippy Dies’ and much more about anxiety regarding both the past and the future. The lengthy flashbacks eventually reveal that it is the events, decisions and near misses in Dickie and Imelda’s past which have really shaped the family’s current circumstances, leading to an unsettling but fitting conclusion. ‘The Bee Sting’ is an ambitious novel with satisfying character development.
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Tagged as Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, David Baddiel, Fiction, Francesca Segal, Literary Fiction, Natasha Lance Rogoff, Non fiction, Novels, Paul Murray, Reading, Reviews
August 2, 2024 · 5:56 pm
The Booker Prize longlist was announced on Tuesday. The 13 titles are:
Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
James by Percival Everett
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
My Friends by Hisham Matar
This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud
Held by Anne Michaels
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
Enlightenment by Sarah Perry
Playground by Richard Powers
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood Continue reading →
July 28, 2024 · 11:53 am
The longlist for this year’s Booker Prize is due to be announced on Tuesday 30th July. I’ve had mixed results over the last decade or so in my attempts to predict some likely contenders alongside my personal preferences and other possibilities, but it’s always fun to guess anyway.
Irish authors often dominate the shortlists as they did last year when ‘Prophet Song’ by Paul Lynch won the Prize. I am keen to read Long Island by Colm Tóibín which is a sequel to Brooklyn. Ghost Mountain by Rónán Hession is a fable about a mountain that suddenly appears and sounds rather different from his first two novels Leonard and Hungry Paul and Panenka. I don’t know much about Intermezzo by Sally Rooney which will be published in September – books eligible for this year’s Prize must have been published in the UK between 1st October 2023 and 30th September 2024 – but it’s hard to imagine Rooney moving too far away from the themes of her previous novels including Normal People which was longlisted in 2018. Continue reading →
July 27, 2024 · 3:58 pm
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein won the first Women’s Prize for Non Fiction last month. I read Klein’s first book No Logo several years ago, which I felt had already dated somewhat over a decade after its release. In contrast, the ideas explored in ‘Doppelganger’ are very much of the here and now, having been published just last year, but I think this book will remain relevant for a long time. What starts out as an amusing anecdote about being repeatedly mistaken for anti-vax right-wing conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf becomes a deep dive in the world of post-truth politics and the ways in which doubles are reflected in the “mirror world” particularly online. This includes frequently discussed topics such as how people curate their online personas and how political divisions are fuelled by disinformation and misinformation, alongside digressions about autism, doubles in literature, climate change and antisemitism. This sounds like a jumbled mix of ideas, but Klein is astute and erudite and balances personal reflections with rigorous journalistic analysis.
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Tagged as Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Fiction, Jamie Collinson, Kaliane Bradley, Naomi Klein, Non fiction, Novels, Reading, Reviews
June 15, 2024 · 10:08 am
Knife by Salman Rushdie recounts how the world-famous author survived an attempted murder at a literary event in New York in August 2022, over three decades after a fatwa was issued which forced him into hiding for several years. Rushdie manages to create suspense despite the outcome of the shocking attack being well known, and describes his distressing injuries and long recovery in some detail. The passage where Rushdie imagines a conversation with his attacker, who he refers to only as “The A”, is a creative and moving way of addressing such a traumatic event. Above all though, Rushdie is keen to emphasise that ‘Knife’ is also a love story. Many people were unaware that he had quietly married author and poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths less than a year before the attack, and the book is a moving tribute to her support. Rushdie said that writing about the attack was the only way he would be able to move forward, and I hope that this has helped him achieve that. Many thanks to Vintage Books for sending me a review copy via NetGalley. Continue reading →
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Tagged as Asako Yuzuki, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Booker Prize, Fiction, Henry Jeffreys, Kirsty Capes, Non fiction, Novels, Reading, Reviews, Salman Rushdie
May 15, 2024 · 7:00 pm
Pandora’s Box by Peter Biskind is about how the golden age of prestige television drama series in the early 2000s has evolved to an era of “peak TV” in which a saturated market produced 600 new scripted series in 2022 alone. It’s a three act story which begins with how the cable channel HBO distinguished itself from network television and found enormous success and critical acclaim with complex, gritty dramas such as The Sopranos at the turn of the century, inspiring several other series led by antihero protagonists. Then the DVD rental service Netflix disrupted everything, committing to series without pilots and introducing the concept of dropping all episodes of a series at the same time. And then its competitors arrived with tech giants creating their own streaming arms, notably Apple TV, Disney+ and Amazon Prime among others, churning out new series at great expense but not always succeeding in producing high quality content. Some of the detail about the financial side of the business is quite dry, but there are some interesting anecdotes about how some of the best known television dramas were made and why HBO rejected shows like Mad Men and House of Cards. Biskind is best known as a film critic and comes across as someone who doesn’t much care for television which results in an unusual and abrupt tone. However, his deep scepticism for the subject is well placed when discussing the flawed business models and rampant corporate greed in the industry. Continue reading →
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Tagged as Baillie Gifford Prize for Non Fiction, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, David Nicholls, Fiction, John Vaillant, Non fiction, Novels, Peter Biskind, Reading, Reviews
April 20, 2024 · 12:47 pm
A Tomb With a View by Peter Ross is a fascinating book about graveyards in Britain and Ireland and the stories of some well-known and forgotten residents as well as the work of those who care for them. The famous Victorian cemeteries in London such as Highgate and Kensal Rise face issues with limited space and expensive upkeep. Ross writes sensitively about a variety of subjects such as Muslim funerals in east London, the infant burial grounds known as cillini in Ireland, graveyards in Northern Ireland in the context of the Troubles and the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who recover the remains of soldiers found in northern France and trace the living relatives. Ross is a true taphophile – a lover of cemeteries – and a compassionate guide rather than an overly nostalgic one. ‘A Tomb With a View’ is an excellent book about reckoning with death in a life-affirming rather than morbid way.
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Tagged as Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Claire Dederer, Eliza Clark, Fiction, Literature, Non fiction, Novels, Orla Owen, Peter Ross, Reading, Reviews
February 16, 2024 · 9:53 am
Wellness by Nathan Hill is set in the 1990s when Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students amid a vibrant art scene in Chicago. The novel follows the ups and downs of their relationship over the next 20 years through to middle age when they are married with a young son. Jack is a photographer while Elizabeth works at a wellness lab specialising in using placebos to treat disorders. The character development is exceptionally detailed, although some of the deep dives about psychology and algorithms could have been a little more concise. Still, unlike most doorstopper novels which deal with complex social issues – ‘Wellness’ is a hefty 600+ pages – it doesn’t take itself too seriously thanks to Hill’s sharp eye for humour and cynicism. I enjoyed Hill’s debut The Nix a lot and his second novel doesn’t disappoint. Many thanks to Pan Macmillan for sending me a review copy via NetGalley. Continue reading →
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Tagged as Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, David Nicholls, Fiction, Kieran Yates, Literary Fiction, Madeleine Gray, Nathan Hill, Non fiction, Novels, Reading, Reviews
January 13, 2024 · 11:57 am
My list of books to read continues to expand and there are lots to look forward to in 2024. All publication dates where known apply to the United Kingdom only.
Wellness by Nathan Hill is published in January. I really enjoyed Hill’s debut novel The Nix and his second book is another 600+page doorstopper about a couple who meet in Chicago in the 1990s. Another second novel out in January is Come and Get It by Kiley Reid set on a university campus in the United States. Continue reading →
January 12, 2024 · 6:34 pm
One of the stand-out novels I read in 2023 was Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld which is a fun and refreshingly original take on the genre. I also really enjoyed The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith which is the seventh outing for Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott’s detective agency as they infiltrate a sinister cult in Norfolk. Continue reading →
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Tagged as 2023, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books of the Year, Fiction, Literary Awards, Literary Fiction, Literature, Non fiction, Novels, Reading, Reviews
January 11, 2024 · 8:51 pm
I often seek out the books which receive rare positive reviews in Private Eye magazine and Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis is a truly eye-opening look at where our waste actually ends up. Franklin-Wallis probes a lot of uncomfortable truths about recycling and greenwashing on his travels around the world starting at a recycling centre in Essex and followed by a mega-landfill site in India, a textile market in Ghana, a processing plant in California where defunct tech is recycled, and sewers in London. The legacy of wealthy countries exporting their waste to poorer countries as well as overproduction and corporate greed have created staggering problems with waste disposal. The most disheartening thing is how so many supposed solutions end up failing to make any real difference or cause more issues further down the line. With textiles, for example, cotton tote bags need to be used 7,000 times to match the environmental cost of a single-use plastic bag, clothes made from recycled fibres are themselves much more difficult to recycle and 25% of clothing is never sold because it is thrown away by companies rather than reused elsewhere. If the first two-thirds of the book haven’t made you feel depressed enough, wait until you read about the environmental impact of the 97% of global waste generated by industry including mining and nuclear waste which dwarfs the 3% generated by households. Franklin-Wallis does offer some messages of hope about how to reduce consumption, although I still finished the book feeling very overwhelmed by the scale of the problem. Essential reading, and a last-minute entry for one of my books of the year. Continue reading →
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Tagged as Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Fiction, French Literature, Helen Pearson, Literature, Non fiction, Oliver Franklin-Wallis, Pierre Lemaitre, Reading, Reviews
November 17, 2023 · 8:26 pm
The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith is the seventh outing for Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott’s private detective agency. When they are approached by the family of a young man feared to have been brainwashed by a religious cult, Robin goes undercover at Chapman’s farm in Norfolk to find out what is really going on at the Universal Humanitarian Church led by the charismatic Papa J. Meanwhile, Cormoran tracks down various ex-members as evidence mounts of the Church’s involvement in several serious crimes.
‘The Running Grave’ is another 900+ page doorstopper like its two predecessors in the series, but thankfully has none of The Ink Black Heart’s formatting issues and all of the gripping atmosphere of Troubled Blood. There are no signs that the romantic tension between Cormoran and Robin will be properly resolved any time soon, and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if this was strung out for another seven novels at this rate. Since I’ve been writing this blog, this is the only long-running series I have really got into and stuck with over a number of years. The familiarity of the characters is now very comforting, even if Robin’s time at Chapman’s Farm involves some of the most sinister and disturbing events in the series yet. J. K. Rowling has confirmed that she has been working on the eighth book and I would very happily read several more instalments following Strike and Ellacott’s cases.
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Tagged as Angela Kirwin, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Catherine Chidgey, Chris Broad, Cormoran Strike, Fiction, Non fiction, Novels, Reading, Reviews, Robert Galbraith
November 15, 2023 · 11:57 pm
Nine Pints by Rose George is a non-fiction about “the mysterious, miraculous world of blood”. The title refers to the approximate amount of blood we have in our bodies, and George explores various blood-related topics across nine chapters covering disease, cultural attitudes and medical breakthroughs. George‘s global tour includes HIV education in South Africa, the taboo of menstruation in Nepal, the infected blood scandal in the UK and a controversial plasma clinic in Canada. There are also more positive stories about pioneers such as Oxford scientist Dame Janet Vaughan who set up the world’s first mass blood donation system during the Second World War and Arunchalam Muruganantham who helped develop low-cost sanitary products in India. George is an engaging popular science author whose thorough essays combine historical research and field reporting and are crammed with facts. It’s probably not the ideal book for anyone who is particularly squeamish, but at least there aren’t any illustrations. Continue reading →
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Tagged as Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Fiction, Kate Atkinson, Literary Fiction, Literature, Non fiction, Novels, Politics, Reading, Reviews, Rose George, Sebastian Payne, Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
October 13, 2023 · 7:54 pm
The Fraud by Zadie Smith weaves together three storylines based on true events in the 19th century. A Cockney butcher arrives in London from Australia claiming to be Sir Roger Tichborne, the heir to a baronetcy and previously thought to have been lost at sea. His sensational fraud trial in London captures everyone’s attention, including Eliza Touchet, the cousin-by-marriage of prolific novelist William Ainsworth who outsold Charles Dickens in his day, and Andrew Bogle, a former Jamaican slave who believes the claimant really is Tichborne despite a considerable amount of evidence that he definitely isn’t. ‘The Fraud’ is Smith’s long-awaited first piece of long-form historical fiction, but ultimately I prefer her contemporary novels. It is an original take on a forgotten case with some humorous dialogue and parallels with more recent events in the US. However, I think it was held back by its overly complex structure scattered across very short chapters, with the three strands never quite hanging together in a coherent or satisfying way (much like my issue with To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara). Many thanks to Penguin UK, Hamish Hamilton for sending me a review copy via NetGalley. Continue reading →
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Tagged as Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Mark O’Connell, Non fiction, Novels, Paul Murray, Reading, Reviews, Sarah Ogilvie, Zadie Smith
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