Tag Archives | book review

“Saturday” by Ian McEwan

27 April 2011 · Reading · Comments { 1 }

Not my favourite McEwan – that is Atonement by a long way. This was OK, a more meditative book, full of long meandering passages from the head of Henry Perowne, a successful neurosurgeon living in Marylebone with his successful wife and talented blues-musician son, awaiting the return from France of his beautiful and talented and [...]

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“Written on the Body” by Jeanette Winterson

13 April 2011 · Reading · Comments { 5 }

There is a lot of beauty in this book. Every sentence is like a poem. You can feel the care and attention that went into every choice of word. For the first few pages, I was blown away and thought I had discovered a new favourite writer. But towards the end my enthusiasm faded. I [...]

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“Remarkable Creatures” by Tracy Chevalier

6 April 2011 · Reading · Comments { 3 }

This is a historical novel about Mary Anning, a young fossil hunter in early 19th century Britain. I quite enjoyed it, but it didn’t do anything special for me. It’s funny – although I studied history at university and have a lot of interest in it, I generally prefer contemporary fiction. I think it’s because [...]

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“The Pesthouse” by Jim Crace

30 March 2011 · Reading · Comments { 0 }

Poor Jim Crace. Almost every review I’ve read of this book compares it to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and I’m going to do the same. Can’t help it. They’re both novels set in post-apocalyptic America with two people struggling to get to the coast, and they both came out at about the same time too. [...]

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“Brick Lane” by Monica Ali

9 March 2011 · Reading · Comments { 4 }

Not sure what to write about this. I enjoyed the story and it was well-written, but to me nothing special. Hated the ending – don’t worry, I won’t give it away, but the last line just sounded so corny I was quite shocked. The book as a whole is not simplistic, but the ending made [...]

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“Making Inroads” by the Rowan Arts Project

2 February 2011 · Reading · Comments { 0 }

I really enjoyed this free book put together by the Rowan Arts Project. It’s a series of interviews with people who live and work on the Holloway Road in north London, each one accompanied by a photograph. The stories are simple, just a few paragraphs each, but fascinating to read. Each person chooses an object [...]

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“The Buddha of Suburbia” by Hanif Kureishi

19 January 2011 · Reading · Comments { 4 }

I grew up in Beckenham, the exact part of London suburbia in which this novel is set. To my knowledge it’s the only time a novel has ever been set in Beckenham – in fact, it’s probably the only time a novel has even mentioned Beckenham in passing. So I very much enjoyed the opening [...]

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“Crow” by Ted Hughes

8 December 2010 · Reading · Comments { 0 }

I rarely read poetry, but I enjoyed this strange little book by Ted Hughes. It’s full of dark imagery, violence and unexpected humour. The poems read like myths of the origins of the world, except that at the middle of them all is Crow, this anarchic, chaotic, ugly, violent figure, playing tricks on God and [...]

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“Ashes” by Matthew Crow

24 November 2010 · Reading · Comments { 0 }

The opening image of Ashes is a powerful one – a group of kids trying to stone a cat to death. The reason? “Something to do”. The tone is set for the rest of the novel. Bleakness, lack of hope, pointless violence, misdirected anger, innocent victims. The setting is Meadow Well council estate in North-East [...]

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“The Sea” by John Banville

10 November 2010 · Reading · Comments { 2 }

John Banville is a magnificent prose writer. I loved his earlier book Birchwood, so thought I would try out The Sea, which won him the Booker Prize in 2005. I liked it, but did feel a little bit disappointed. The writing was still beautiful. The blurb on the cover from the Daily Telegraph was not [...]

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