Category Archives: fiction

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

part three of review of Troubled Blood Continue reading

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Troubled blood by Robert Galbraith (Sphere) part two

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

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

“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)

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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The Mystery of Henri Pick by David Foenkinos (Pushkin)

“In 1971, the American writer Richard Brautigan published a quirky love story about a male librarian and a young woman with a spectacular body.” A PROPER mystery of the kind that perhaps might not have even been translated into English … Continue reading

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The Panda Theory by Pascal Garnier (Gallic)

“He was sitting alone at the end of a bench on a deserted railway station.” I REALLY like the way Passcal Garnier writes. Setting aside the surrealist crimo plotlines, his characters breathe. They are in the moment. We are with … Continue reading

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Love Many by Niamh Campbell (winner of Sunday Times audio award)

IT is scandalous to suggest that this blog is in some way in the pay of the James Joyce Jolly bursary to promote writers of Irish descent. It is true that I took a drink (an obscure poteen derivation) from … Continue reading

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Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor (Secker & Warburg)

“All night long he would walk the ship, from bow to stern, from dusk until quarterlight, that stick-like limping man from Connemara with the drooping shoulders and ash-coloured clothes”. I HAD to re-read Joseph O’Connor’s towering fiction on the Irish … Continue reading

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A Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry (Faber)

“I am Winona. In early times I was Ojinjintka, which means rose.” SO we are back with those McNulty’s again are we, Sebastian? Another tome in the family history? More about naughty uncle Thomas in Tennessee? Barry’s prose can read … Continue reading

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