Category Archives: Biography

Summer by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)

Posted on August 17, 2020 by

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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In Love with George Eliot by Kathy O’Shaughnessy (Scribe)

Posted on March 3, 2020 by

“The train had shuddered to a halt. Clatter of doors-opening and shutting, noise echoing in the huge vault of Euston station, a smell of oil-flavoured steam and soot. A last door opens…”  THERE might be a warning on this: do … Continue reading →

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The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas by Daniel James (dead ink)

Posted on January 16, 2020 by

“This book is dangerous” Brash, original, smart… star reporter Daniel James chases down the elusive recluse that is Ezra Maas, cult artist, vanished megastar…this is the kind of book destined, I hope, to find a cult following of its own, … Continue reading →

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Van Gogh and Britain (Tate)

Posted on June 6, 2019 by

“I’m gradually beginning to turn into a true cosmopolitan, meaning not a Dutchman, Englishman or Frenchman, but simoply a man” Vincent Van Gogh February 9, 1874. THIS  book goes with the brilliant exhibition at the Tate Britain, but sometimes a … Continue reading →

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Milkman by Anna Burns (Faber)

Posted on January 25, 2019 by

“The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died.” THE prose is wonderfully joyful and rambling. The Guardian refers to this winner … Continue reading →

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Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber)

Posted on September 26, 2018 by

“Marianne amswers the door when Connell rings the bell.” BY coincidence I heard a radio broadcast where a well known doctor admitted to flunking out of Oxford because of an unhappy love affair and where the plot details do not … Continue reading →

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Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar (Gallic)

Posted on June 6, 2018 by

“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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Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham (Hodder)

Posted on November 8, 2017 by

“My name is Sebastian Rudd, and though I am a well-known street lawyer, you will not see my name on billboards, on bus benches, or screaming at you from the yellow pages.” THERE is a library near me, beside a … Continue reading →

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The trip to Echo Springs by Olivia Laing (Canongate)

Posted on August 23, 2017 by

“Here’s a thing. Iowa City, 1973. Two men in a car, a Ford Falcon convertible that’s seen better days. It’s winter, the kind of cold that hurts bones and lungs, that reddens knuckles, makes noses run. If you could, by … Continue reading →

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My name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (Penguin)

Posted on May 24, 2017 by

“There was a time, and it was many years ago now, when I had to stay in hospital for almost nine weeks” THE thing about writing solely on a macro level is that there is no horizon over which the sun … Continue reading →

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