Category Archives: fiction

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma (One)

Posted on September 22, 2015 by drewsmith28

“We were fishermen. My brothers and I became fishermen in January of 1996 after our father moved out of Akure, a town in the west of Nigeria, where we had lived together all our lives.” LIKE the Seven Killings book … Continue reading →

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A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Picador)

Posted on September 15, 2015 by drewsmith28

“The eleventh apartment had only one closet, but it did have a sliding glass door that opened onto a small balcony, from which he could see a man sitting across the way, outdoors in only a T shirt and shorts … Continue reading →

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The Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan (Faber)

Posted on August 19, 2015 by drewsmith28

“Snow was falling past the window and in her sleep she pictured a small girl and her father in a railway carriage”. We have two modern themes here,  dimentia and computer war games in Afghanistan. They are wrapped around a … Continue reading →

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The girl who wasn’t there by Ferdinand von Schirach (Abacus)

Posted on August 14, 2015 by drewsmith28

“On a fine spring day in the year 1838, a new kind of reality was created on the Boulevard de Temple in Paris” That reality was of course photography which is part of the theme here. To those of us … Continue reading →

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Satin Island by Tom McCarthy (Jonathan Cape)

Posted on August 9, 2015 by drewsmith28

  “Turin is where the famous shroud is from, the one showing Christ’s body supine after crucifixion: hands folded over genitals, eyes closed, head crowned with thorns. The image isn’t really visible on the bare linen. It only emerged…” U … Continue reading →

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All the light we cannot see by Anthony Doerr (Fourth Estate)

Posted on June 23, 2015 by drewsmith28

“Leaflets. At dusk they pour from the sky. They blow across ramparts, turn cartwheeels over rooftops…Urgent message to the inhabitants of this town. Depart immediately to open country.” He is the orphan radio repairer. German. She is the blind daughter … Continue reading →

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The Gathering by Anne Enright (Vintage)

Posted on June 1, 2015 by drewsmith28

“I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother’s house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure if it really did happen.” THE back cover copy on my edition says that this 2007 … Continue reading →

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The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman (Simon & Schuster)

Posted on May 21, 2015 by drewsmith28

“You would think it would be impossible to find anything new in the world, creatures no man has seen before, one-of-a-kind oddities in which nature has taken a backseat to the coursing pulse of the fantastical and the marvelous.” STORY … Continue reading →

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Three Brothers by Peter Ackroyd (Vintage)

Posted on April 30, 2015 by drewsmith28

“In the London borough of Camden, in the middle of the last century, there lived three brothers…”  HISTORIANS should always write at least one novel set in their own era. They have the training for detail to record the now. … Continue reading →

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Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (Vintage)

Posted on April 28, 2015 by drewsmith28

  “It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shear’s house.” On first reading of Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time … Continue reading →

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