Victoria Hyslop (Review, 2005); pbk £7.99. “At last-a beach book with a heart.” When I read this quotation from the Observer, my heart sank. I did not feel inclined to read, far less review, a novel in the holiday fiction genre. However, the extraordinary setting of a real-life twentieth-century leper colony makes The Island a Read More
Tracy Chevalier (Harper, 2006); pbk £7.99. Girl with a Pearl Earring is a fictional narrative of the titular girl in Johannes Vermeer’s famous seventeenth century painting of the same name. Set in the Dutch city of Delft, the novel is beautifully written and well-researched, with vivid descriptions of the markets and streets of the city. Read More
In the opening pages of her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Jeanette Winterson makes clear that this is much more than a “re-make” ofOranges Are Not The Only Fruit, her earlier fictionalised account of similar territory. This memoir is much bleaker, darker and, in the end, more redemptive. It is about the Read More
Even those who have never read Robert Louis Stevenson’s swashbuckling tale will be familiar withTreasure Island to some degree. The story about parrot-adorned be-crutched villains, mutiny and buried treasure has become the quintessential pirate adventure from which many others have been informed. As one of a selection of twenty books chosen for the 2013 World Book Night event, Read More
The Secret Scripture comes from the pen of acclaimed Irish author, Sebastian Barry. In 2008, it was named the Costa Book of the Year. The novel tells the story of Roseanne McNulty, who has been a patient in a mental hospital for more years than anyone can remember. With the hospital about to close and Roseanne Read More
The Road Home, by Rose Tremain, concerns a Russian man who travels to Britain to find work so he can send money back home to his mother and five year old daughter, Maya. Tremain successfully portrays a man down on his luck, hopeful and thoughtful yet also weak and tired. Sceptical as I was when Read More
“’Your daughter is awful tanned. Is she that colour everyday?’ I imagine for a moment what the world might be like if people could change colour every day. ” Red Dust Road starts in Abuja, in an extraordinary and captivating opening chapter which packs the case for a journey which crosses countries, continents and hemispheres. The book begins with “Jonathan” , Read More
Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader met with much critical acclaim when it was published in his native Germany in 1995. Since then, it has won literary awards in Germany and France, been translated into thirty nine languages, and adapted for the big screen. The Reader also finds itself a staple on high school reading lists in Germany and beyond. So Read More
Imagine a world where the great land mass of the Pangea is still intact and human history has taken an entirely different route to the one we are familiar with. A world where geo-political circumstances have resulted in African nations developing into colonial powers and Europeans becoming a marginalised and dominated people. Noughts and Crosses by Read More