The son in question here is an only child, both of his parents and of his surrogate mum. Seth is a baby whom New York-based Talissa carries and delivers for London couple, Alaric and Mary. Mary chooses the name Seth,...
~ Big Swiss, by Jen Beagin ~ Scribner, 2023 From the very outset, this book made me smile. It is humorously written, and it is clear the author is the type who likes to surprise her reader, usually by extending...
~ No One Saw a Thing, by Andrea Mara ~ Bantam, 2023. There have been many novels written about children who are abducted, who have gone missing, who are held captive say in a school building, and all of these...
~ Sal, by Mick Kitson ~ Canongate, 2018 It is hard not to be charmed from the outset at the telling of the story by a precocious 13 year old, who is super protective of her 10 year old sister,...
~ The Truths we Hold: An American Journey, by Kamala Harris ~ Penguin Random House, 2019 This biography was published in 2019, so this book is the story of Harris’ childhood and career till then: as district attorney for San...
~ Toby’s Room, by Pat Barker ~ Doubleday, 2012 ~ Noonday, by Pat Barker ~ Doubleday, 2016 It has been quite awhile since I read a Pat Barker novel, and I wonder why it has taken me so long to...
Set in the 1820 or 1830s, in the Black Country (West Midlands of the UK, previously a coal mining region) this book is about ‘the noble art’ of fisticuffs, or pugilism, or as we know it today, boxing. Most unusually,...
In the introduction, Lynne Truss calls this novel a masterpiece, and so it is. Truss however does not agree with common opinion that it is necessarily a parody of Mary Webb’s rural novels which were popular in the 1920s and...
It is with great pleasure I now know of yet another wonderful writer and storyteller, Nathan Hill. This is the first book of his that I have come across (Wellness is Hill’s 2nd novel), and after this, I fully intend to read...
The title of this book is singularly apt. Choice is not a novel, rather it is 3 long, short-stories, 2 set in London and 1 in Bangladesh, which all show individuals making choices, and the constrains and consequences of those choices....
While one may disagree about Booker Prize winners, amongst the other shortlisted novels for the prize, there are usually some gems to be found. In the 2023 shortlist, Sarah Bernstein’s Study for Obedience is wonderfully detached, telling of a Jewish woman...
From the very start, the quality of the writing was obvious, which explained why it had been shortlisted for the 2023 Booker. The writing style is so distinctive it took me a page and a half, at least, to sync...
This book is supposedly an international bestseller, the debut novel about twenty-five year old Takako, niece of the owner of the 3rd generation Morisake Bookshop in Jimbocho, a part of Tokyo with more than 170 second hand bookshops, said to be...
This is by no means the worst of Umrigar’s novels, but it is not her best either. It is a very readable, pleasant novel, set within a Parsi community in Bombay. This novel is fairly conventional, the classic story of...
The writing voice is clear and distinctive as a bell from the very start, a stream of consciousness which runs through the novel which is set within the space of a single day, very much in the Mrs Dalloway style....
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