Witch trials
This novel set in a small village in Scotland, Kilgoyne, featuring the protagonist, Majorie Crowe, whom the villagers think is between 60 and 70 years of age, “They think me to divorced or a lifelong spinster, that I used to...
Lisa
Cat’s Cradle
There have been so many Japanese books in translation available of recent years that I have ended up reading a good many myself, such as Sayata Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, Meiko Kawakami’s Breast and Eggs, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s series of Before...
Seville oranges and sugar make a pleasant, if imperfect, pot
Being a lover of marmalade, this title and its glorious front cover of 9 marmalade pots intrigued me. The story is of the fictional descendants of John Keiller, of Dundee Marmalade fame. As any marmalade eater will know, marmalade is...
Delicious drawing-room dialogue, but lacking in charm
Here is yet another example of a writer who produced a stunningly good debut novel (Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand), and whose 2nd (The Summer Before the War) and now 3rd novel have been somewhat disappointing subsequently. There are of course many...
Medical Injustice
““When I say to you that what happened to those girls was the greatest hurt in my life, I am speaking the God’s honest truth” (p141). These are the words of Dr Civil Townsend, in 2016 when she is already...
An unexpected and disturbing visitor
Into the mundanity and trudge of Sam’s and Elena’s lives comes a bear. Sam and Elena live in San Juan with this ailing mother in a increasingly dilapidated house. Since Sam was 16 and Elena 18, they have been taking...
Personal and political in post-apartheid South Africa
I am coming to this book a quarter of a century after it won the Booker Prize in 1999. Heaven knows how many years this relatively slim volume has been in my boxes, carried around from house move to house...
Jump off the beam, flip off the bars
Having enjoyed watching the gymnasts at the Paris Olympics 2024, I marvelled at their skill and also at their ability to take all the pressure. But I lacked the imagination to think of the parents of these young people, and...
Inferno of Exploitation
I was surprised to see emblazoned across the front cover, ‘The Uncensored Original Edition’, which has apparently been lost for over 80 years (the copy I had is published by Sharp Press in 2003); the original was first published in...
In the Darkling Wood
I was expecting a book of some originality just from my initial browse, and I was not disappointed. This is an unusual read, beautifully crafted, which makes land and landscape the key protagonist. Our human protagonist is Lamentations Callat, sometimes...
A pleasant immigrant story
The best thing about this novel, is that it a migration-Vietnamese American diaspora story, without being too overtly so. The focus of the story is more character driven, than migration or cultural differences or migrant angst/mistreatment driven. The chapters are...
A bubble poised perfectly for a fleeting moment
In a way, it feels unnecessary to review this novella, because Colm Toibin’s Foreword already did such a good job of reviewing it, very comprehensively and in the most complimentary of terms. The novel’s protagonist is Bombayite Sandeep, 10 years...
Homo neanderthalis, homo sapiens, and human consciousness
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,...
Like Switzerland, Big Swiss is a neutral read
~ 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...
Missing on the Tube
~ 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...
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