Dominoes by Phoebe McIntosh
Dominoes by Phobe McIntosh explores important issues of race and identity, while through its heart runs a classic tale of star-crossed lovers.
Book Review: Cambridge by Caryl Phillips
This dual narrative set in a 19th-century Caribbean island is an interesting exploration of a critical period, but the narratives feel unbalanced: we spend a lot of time immersed in the prejudices of the plantation owner's daughter, while the account…
Race & Class in Jamaican Fiction: Dog-Heart by Diana McCaulay
Dog-Heart tells the story of two Jamaicans from very different worlds. Sahara is a light-skinned “uptown” woman who runs a successful Kingston restaurant. Dexter is a poor, dark-skinned boy from the “ghetto” neighbourhood of Jacob’s Pen.
Lote by Shola van Reinhold #ReadIndies
Lote, a debut novel by Shola van Reinhold, is an intelligent, beautifully written piece of literary fiction that explores issues of art, beauty, race, sexuality and more.
Digging to America by Anne Tyler: Review
In Digging to America, Tyler charts the course of two mismatched families, the hale and hearty, all-American Donaldsons and the quieter, more reticent Iranian-American Yazdans. All they have in common is that they both adopted babies from Korea at the…
The Good Life Elsewhere: A Dark Moldovan Comedy of Migration
To describe The Good Life Elsewhere by Moldovan writer Vladimir Lorchenkov as a comedy is slightly misleading. It’s certainly shot through with black humour and absurd situations as some Moldovan villagers go to ever more desperate lengths to escape their poverty and move…
Review of The Pimlico Kid by Barry Walsh
Writing about Indian Magic recently reminded me of another book set in the 1960s, one I read a while ago and wanted to write about, but never got around to. That book is The Pimlico Kid by Barry Walsh, a…
As if by magic…
A sharp-eyed Amazon-watcher just emailed to let me know that my next book, A Virtual Love, has been listed and is available for pre-order. Now don’t worry, this isn’t a sales pitch – I wouldn’t ask you to go and…
“Tomorrow Pamplona” by Jan van Mersbergen
A road trip taken by two men across Europe to the bull-running at Pamplona. The set-up appealed to me: it’s quite similar to my own novel, with two men on a road trip, exploring the strange relationship between them and…