Review: The Round House – Louise Erdrich

I’d only vaguely heard of Lousie Erdrich before coming to this book but have now found out that she is an acclaimed writer of books featuring Native Americans and is enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Her Wikipedia entry tells us that she is one quarter Native American and runs [...]

Review: A Wolf in Hindelheim – Jenny Mayhew

It’s not often I feel this enthusiastic about a debut novel from a newly-published writer. In A Wolf in Hinelheim Jenny Mayhew has created a very believable community of characters and placed them in a fictional region of Germany in 1926.  Her writing and complex plotting shows a maturity which might suggest that she has [...]

Review: Anatomy of a Night – Anna Kim

Anna Kim was born in South Korea but was brought up in Germany where her father was appointed a Professor of Fine Arts.  She writes in German and her book Anatomy of a Night is one of the first four books to be published by new Berlin-based publisher Frisch and Co who specialise in [...]

Review: From the Fatherland With Love – Ryu Murakami

From the Fatherland With Love is a vast novel (664 pages), written on an epic scale, an alternative reality novel describing the events surrounding the invasion of and economically bankrupt Japan by an opportunistic North Korea.  It’s author, Ryu Murakami, wrote the book in 2005 when the Japanese economy had gone into decline.  By setting [...]

Review: Nostalgia – Jonathan Buckley

In Nostalgia, Jonathan Buckley has done for the Tuscan town of Castelluccio what William Nicholson did for the Sussex town of Lewes (The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life) by writing a novel which captures the essence of people and place as he gently unpacks the life of its inhabitants for the delight of his readers.

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Review: The Quarry – Damon Galgut

I’ve not read any South African books for a long time – noteworthy South African novels which stick in my mind would be Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, Disgrace by J M Coetzee and a couple of books by Nadime Gordimer (I am ashamed to notice that these are all by white [...]

Review: The Rosie Project – Graeme Simsion

The Rosie Project is a bit of phenomenon. It’s going to be published in 34 territories over the next few months which for a first novel by a 56 year old man is not bad going.  The author, Graeme Simsion, comes from Melbourne and the Australians have had the opportunity to read it well before [...]

Review: Penguin Underground Lines – various authors

2013 sees the 150th anniversary of the London Underground, “the tube”, and Penguin books have brought out twelve small books (available either singly or as a boxed set), one for each tube line, commemorating the wonderfully eccentric tube line which serves the Britain;s capital.

I found this to be a fascinating collection with a wide [...]

Review: The Dance of the Seagull – Andrea Camilleri

I apologise that my email notification system is not working very well at the moment. While some subscribers are receiving emails for every post, some are receiving none. I have tried and failed to resolve this problem and am in the process of installing a new system to which I have to transfer all the [...]

Review: Binocular Vision – Edith Pearlman

I’m having a week of short stories – on Monday I wrote about Peter Stamm’s rather depressing book We’re Flying and today I’m reviewing the very different Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman, published by the highly regarded Pushkin Press.

Edith Pearlman has been writing short stories for many years (she is now 76), and although [...]