Author Archives: drewsmith28

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About drewsmith28

Words, words, words...

The Hungry Empire by Lizzie Collingham (Bodley Head)

Posted on July 17, 2018 by drewsmith28

“Saturday 18 July 1545 was a fish day on the Mary Rose” I SUSPECT if you went back in time the most difficult thing you would encounter might be the food, an argument given more than a little weight by … Continue reading →

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A long and messy business by Rowley Leigh (Unbound)

Posted on June 28, 2018 by drewsmith28

“I have been doing this sort of thing for quite a while now.” I am not sure anyone should write a cookery book until they reach a certain age. It is quite possible to open a food business with a … Continue reading →

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Lincoln in the bardo by George Sanders (Bloomsbury)

Posted on June 18, 2018 by drewsmith28

“On our wedding day I was forty-six, she was eighteen.” The Bardo of the title is a Buddhist idea of a transitional state between life and death, a purgatory. I mention it because no one else bothers. There is a … Continue reading →

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Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar (Gallic)

Posted on June 6, 2018 by drewsmith28

“Mama often talked of this house when I was a child, and of its squirrels with particular fondness.” WE are in the grand manner of the novel as literary artifice, a swell of sentences, characters in the rough, an anchored … Continue reading →

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Nagasaki by Eric Faye (Gallic)

Posted on May 22, 2018 by drewsmith28

“Imagine a man in his fifties disappointed to have reached middle age so quickly…” SCANT as a haiku, we open with all the usual everyday details of life scrubbed out by the obsession. S reads a magazine to which he … Continue reading →

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Black Sugar by Miguel Bonnefoy (Gallic)

Posted on May 10, 2018 by drewsmith28

“The dawn light revealed a ship marooned in the canopy of a vast forest”. I IMAGINE a publisher might throw a party for Miguel Bonnefoy’s lesser characters who only get a walk on part in the novels, somewhere Miss Venezuela … Continue reading →

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Octavio’s Journey by Miguel Bonnefoy (Gallic)

Posted on April 20, 2018 by drewsmith28

“At the port of La Guaira on 20 August 1908, a ship from Trinidad dropped anchor off the Venezuelan coast, unaware that it was offloading a plague which would trouble the country for half a century.”   I abandoned two … Continue reading →

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The Keeper of Lost things by Ruth Hogan (Two Roads)

Posted on April 6, 2018 by drewsmith28

“Charles Bramewell Brockley was travelling alone and without a ticket on the 14.42 from London Bridge to Brighton.” There are different strands to this well received tale. It is a Richard and Judy book of the autumn and a Sunday … Continue reading →

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A short book about painting by Andrew Marr (Quadrille)

Posted on April 2, 2018 by drewsmith28

“What is painting for?” THE painter Patrick Heron said it takes 20 times longer to explain his paintings than a cursory glance can reveal. Words just don’t do it. At heart this is where Marr is taking us in this … Continue reading →

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Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Canongate)

Posted on February 19, 2018 by drewsmith28

“My suffering left me sad and gloomy” THE problem with coming to this book after the film event is that the image of the boy and the tiger marooned on a boat has already passed into popular culture, an indelible, … Continue reading →

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