Tag: book review

How to write a book review

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…
Read more

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!…
Read more

“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…
Read more

“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…
Read more

“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…
Read more

“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…
Read more