Author Archives: drewsmith28

About drewsmith28

Words, words, words...

The Sleeping Car Murders by Sebastien Japrisot (Gallic)

Posted on April 16, 2021 by drewsmith28

IN translation we get a cottage garden style of English not the sprawling, homogenizing white sauce of the ruined mansions of quasi English language. The cathedral once constructed by Dickens is reduced to a semi in suburbia, a bungalow on … Continue reading →

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Bleak House by Charles Dickens, part three (Penguin)

Posted on April 12, 2021 by drewsmith28

BY page 593 this gargantuan torture wheel of a plot is starting to turn.  The perimeter is on the horizon. We have a literary variation on a Swiss watch with all the little interlocking wheels starting to spin. Beyond the … Continue reading →

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Bleak House by Charles Dickens (part two) Penguin

Posted on March 18, 2021 by drewsmith28

IN the hands of a more radical director than the BBC employ, say someone Asian, Bleak House might have been less boisterous and bleaker still. Grandpa Smallweed, Guppy and Tulkinghorn might be even more mendacious, the latent sexuality as headed … Continue reading →

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Bleak House by Charles Dickens (Penguin) part one

Posted on March 2, 2021 by drewsmith28

“LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather.” EVEN in the opening lines above, the style is strikingly modern, almost casual, just taking aim as it were, Hemingway might have approved. … Continue reading →

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Coming soon…a masterpiece

Posted on February 22, 2021 by drewsmith28

Been quiet for a while; re-discovering a masterpiece, review coming soon…watch this space…

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Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith (Sphere) part three, finale

Posted on November 10, 2020 by drewsmith28

part three of review of Troubled Blood Continue reading →

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Troubled blood by Robert Galbraith (Sphere) part two

Posted on October 28, 2020 by drewsmith28

UNILKE the fantasy of Harry Potter, here Joanne Kathleen takes a random group of seemingly respectable ordinary Londoners connected mainly by a doctor’s surgery circa 1973. It is real enough commentary. Each new lead becomes a horse on a carousel … Continue reading →

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Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith (Sphere) part one

Posted on October 18, 2020 by drewsmith28

review of the latest Strike novel
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Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (Vintage)

Posted on September 18, 2020 by drewsmith28

“I sometimes wonder what was disappeared first – among all the things that have vanished from the island.” THE original Japanese version was titled Secret Crystalisation which also marries with the snow falling across the island and perhaps the fate … Continue reading →

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Summer by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)

Posted on August 17, 2020 by drewsmith28

SO, we have the younger genius brother from hell, the father’s mistress who is struck dumb. This is the fourth in the quartet (I presume) and like the other volumes the opening salvo takes no prisoners. “As in, so what?” … Continue reading →

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