Reading

The Silk Peacock by Hilary West

This is an interesting and very varied collection of short stories. The overall style is literary fiction, but there are some murder mysteries mixed in there too. Most of the stories are strictly realistic, but some have elements of fantasy,…
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Who needs Paradise? by Paula Harrold

I first met Paula Harrold when she was a pink-haired Oxford theology student who decorated her bedroom wall with a large scythe. I never expected her to write a romantic comedy. She has now done just that, but it’s not…
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Author interview – J.R. Crook

I reviewed J.R. Crook’s debut novel Sleeping Patterns on this blog a few weeks ago, and thought I’d follow up by asking the writer himself some questions. If you’re not familiar with the book, click here to read my review,…
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The 20 best Caribbean book blogs

Since moving to Barbados in December last year, I’ve been keen to discover more about Caribbean literature, and a great way to do that is by reading book blogs. It took me some time to search out the best ones,…
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Off-key stories hit the mark

I was excited to meet Courttia Newland at Bim Literary Festival here in Barbados earlier this year. He’s a British writer, but was here because his mother is Barbadian. I’d read his debut novel The Scholar when it first came…
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Tabucchi Week: Pereira Maintains

The most striking thing about Pereira Maintains is the narrative voice. It’s narrated in the third person, but the two words from the title, “Pereira maintains”, occur regularly throughout the book to qualify what we’ve just been told.
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Sea of Ink by Richard Weihe

The premise of this book is delightful: a novella in 51 short chapters, describing the life of famous 17th-century Chinese painter Bada Shanren, partly through his paintings themselves, which are reproduced in the book. The writing in places was quite beautiful,…
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Sleeping Patterns

The latest winner of the Luke Bitmead Award, the prize I won myself back in 2008, Sleeping Patterns is an intelligent, intriguing and ultimately rewarding book. It’s experimental in nature. The author, J.R. Crook, stated in an interview with his…
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