~ Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, by Anne Tyler ~ Anne Tyler’s writing often depicts relationships, particularly familial relationships, and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is another wonderful novel in this vein. The novel begins with Pearl, who at about...
~ Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee ~ The novel begins with 22 year old protagonist Casey Han, who has just graduated from Princeton, coming home to Queens, where her Korean immigrant family have always lived, for a...
~ The Gifted School, by Bruce Holsinger ~ Pointed and clever, The Gifted School has a delightfully snarky opening quote: There is something so tantalizing about having a gifted child that some parents will go to almost any lengths to...
~ This Green and Pleasant Land, by Ayisha Malik ~ This novel is kept extremely lighthearted despite taking on some weighty issues in UK society (such as English identity, the rise of Islamophobia, village mentality, discrimination, hate crime, etc.) The...
~ We, the Survivors. By Tash Aw ~ We, The Survivors, is Tash Aw’s fourth novel, and his most accomplished by far. This work of fiction comes very close to being a little masterpiece. Its writing voice is assured, fluent,...
~ A Frightfully English Execution, by Shamini Flint ~ It’s tempting to describe Shamini Flint’s Inspector Singh novels as ‘cosy mysteries’. They feature an appealingly crusty detective, and are full of sly humour. Despite their lack of pretentiousness, though, they...
~ How to Find Love in a Bookshop, by Veronica Henry ~ What a wonderful title. What a lovely front cover. What a lack-lustre read. Henry’s novel sets up Nightingale Bookshop as the centrepiece, but actually, it is nothing more...
~ The Clockmaker’s Daughter, by Kate Morton ~ Dense novels with a haunted house at the center are Kate Morton’s niche, and The Clockmaker’s Daughter fits neatly into her genre. But there comes a point where sheer density can drag...
~ At the Water’s Edge, by Sara Gruen ~ This period romance novel, set in the 2nd World War, features a young protagonist called Maddie, newly married, of the upper crust set in Philadelphia. She does little except enjoy herself...
~ Chances Are…, by Richard Russo ~ In the first chapter of Chances Are…, the reader is introduced to classic Russo. When the [SAT] results came back, his mother met his father at the door. “Have a look at this”,...
~Gap Creek, by Robert Morgan ~ The riveting thing about this novel, for me any rate, is Julie Richards (nee Harmon)’s capacity for hard work and sheer optimism. It is hard to keep in mind she is only 17 years...
~ The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters, by Balli Kaur Jaswal ~ Can a pilgrimage to honour their mother’s dying wishes bring three bickering sisters together? And can they also examine the ghosts of their past and face the...
~ The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert ~ This is one of Gilbert’s earlier works, published in 2002, but her writing voice was distinctive already. It is an aptly named book, chronicling the personality of Eustace Conway, born in...
~ Stay with Me, by Ayobami Adebayo ~ Like most good novels, Stay with Me is both specific — set in Nigeria, in the 1990s, among both traditional and modern people — and universal — a deep look into the...
~ Listen to Me, by Hannah Pittard ~ This slim novel has a very simple storyline: Married couple, Maggie and Mark, with their dog, Gerome, embark on their annual interstate drive to Virginia for a vacation with Mark’s parents. Mark...
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