Just saw a nice post on Read.Learn.Write which goes into the methodology of writing book reviews, using my novel On the Holloway Road as a model. I’ve never really thought about a method for writing reviews before – I tend to just give my response to the book in whatever form seems natural. That’s probably [...]
Tag Archives | book review
Another good review
On the Holloway Road just picked up another excellent review in the book blogging world, this time from Vishy. I haven’t been thinking about the book very much recently – I’m now two books ahead, working on my third novel! So it’s great to have been reminded of On the Holloway Road recently, first by [...]
Great review for On the Holloway Road
Nivedita Barve has just posted a really insightful review of On the Holloway Road – click here to read it. And I don’t call it insightful only because it’s positive She describes the book well, and makes some very interesting points about the characters and themes. I really like the way she describes the tension [...]
“The Brothers” by Asko Sahlberg
The Brothers, by Finnish writer Asko Sahlberg, is the first in Peirene Press’s series of the “Small Epic”. The publisher also draws comparisons with Shakespeare and William Faulkner. No pressure, then. Surprisingly the book did not disappoint. It’s only 122 pages but does pack in a lot of story, including among other things warring brothers, family [...]
“The Problems of Philosophy” by Bertrand Russell
This book is pitched just at the right level for me. I am interested in philosophy, but don’t have enough knowledge of it to be able to understand some of the more complex works. I tried Wittgenstein recently, for instance, and it didn’t take. But this short introduction to some of the basic problems of [...]
“C” by Tom McCarthy
Well, that was a bit different. Don’t come to this book expecting plot, character development or anything like that. The main character, Serge, is like a conduit for signals from the radio that his father is experimenting with when he’s born and that he himself develops a fascination with as he gets older. He’s not [...]
“Half Blood Blues” by Esi Edugyan
This book has it all: a compelling story, a great setting (black jazz musicians in Nazi Germany and occupied Paris), lyrical prose that perfectly captures the voice of the bass-player narrator, Baltimore-born Sid Griffiths, while also weaving in elements of the music it describes. It has jealousy, betrayal, a nice twist in the ending, and [...]
“The Flanders Road” by Claude Simon
Not an easy read, this. The style is experimental, with prose that mimics the way we think rather than the way we’d normally tell a story. So there’s a lot of jumping around from memory to memory by association rather than logic or chronology. The sentences are often long and winding, with digressions and then [...]
“The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes
I bought a signed copy at Highgate Bookshop, took it home and read it from cover to cover without stopping. That’s partly because it’s a short book (150 pages, with fairly large type and liberal use of white space) but also because it really drew me in and made me want to read more. The [...]
New review for On the Holloway Road
On the Holloway Road picked up a good review from Emma over at Book Around the Corner yesterday. I don’t normally tell you about every review, but I wanted to highlight this one particularly because of a beautiful description of my main characters, Jack and Neil. Emma compares them to Sal and Dean in Kerouac’s [...]
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“The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes
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The Sense of an Ending, explained
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Introducing “A Virtual Love”, coming to a bookshop near you in Spring 2013
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Finding some inspiration
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Beauty is a sleeping cat
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Test of stamina at Bim Literary Festival, day two
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Earl Lovelace at Bim Literary Festival
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Austin Clarke at Bim Literary Festival
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Learning from Derek Walcott: Bim Literary Festival, day one
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Great opportunity for unpublished UK writers
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litlove: You did better than I would have done - three hour...
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Andrew Blackman: Ah, thanks a lot Vishy! It's interesting that you...
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