Gothic morals
~ Melmoth, by Sarah Perry ~ This is a difficult book to review. There is a clear plotline, there are a number of strong protagonists, but this novel’s focus is neither on the storyline nor its key characters. It has...
Historical fiction
A Celebration of Unorthodox Relationships
~ City of Girls, by Elizabeth Gilbert ~ After reading Eat Pray Love, and then its sequel Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, I was not very keen to read any more of Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing. So much so...
Privilege and Hardship: The Wives of Raffles
~ Olivia and Sophia, by Rosie Milne ~ This is a version of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and his two sojourns “Eastward” from the perspective of his two wives, Olivia and Sophia. It is not historically accurate; the author says...
A multitude of Austen silhouettes
It is a truth universally acknowledged that few authors can resist the allure of Jane Austen’s deceptively simple plots. Many retellings of her books have emerged over the years, but (spoiler alert!) few of them come close to the wit,...
Pioneer Woman
~ Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser ~ Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little grey house made of logs. Many...
No time for social niceties
~ The Hunger, by Alma Katsu ~ This historical fiction novel tells the story of families of pioneers in wagon trains setting out from Springfield, Illinois, on 15th April 1846, attempting to reach California for a new life. The novel...
The Iliad: as retold by women
~ The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker. ~ It must have been more than 20 years ago when Pat Barker kindly granted me an interview in my MA research. I was then studying her earlier novels in juxtapositon...
The unusually talented Mr Swift
~ A Ladder to the Sky, by John Boyne ~ Maurice Swift is an ambitious novelist with a unfortunate limitation: he is good with words, but has no ideas for plots. He is extraordinarily handsome, though, and both men and...
Intersecting lives in a fluid history
~ A God in Every Stone, by Kamila Shamsie ~ For those of us who are avid Shamsie-readers, this sixth novel is an eagerly awaited one. Kamila Shamsie’s first four novels (In the City By the Sea, Salt and Saffron,...
A beguiling 19th-century botanist
~ The Signature of All Things, by Elizabeth Gilbert ~ Eat Pray Love, and its sequel, Committed, made Elizabeth Gilbert a celebrated author. Those were pleasant enough reads: warm and sincere, if a trifle too gushing; lively and entertaining, if...
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