Category Archives: fiction

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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The shepherd’s hut by Tim Winton (Picador)

Posted on September 19, 2018 by

“When I hit the bitumen and get that smooth grey rumble going under me everything’s hell different” THERE is a sticker on my edition proclaiming that this has been a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, which is a bit … Continue reading →

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Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (Jonathan Cape)

Posted on August 29, 2018 by

  “In 1945 our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals.”   I RECOMMEND that you do not read too many reviews of this brilliant contender for the Man Booker … Continue reading →

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The president’s hat by Antoine Laurain (Gallic)

Posted on August 5, 2018 by

“Daniel Mercier went up the stairs at Gare Saint-Lazare as the crowd surged down.”   THE hat in question – and in the original French edition – belongs to president Francois Mitterand. It is probably just coincidence that two of … Continue reading →

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The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain (Gallic)

Posted on August 2, 2018 by

“The taxi had dropped her on the corner of the boulevard.” This is very filmable – a French comedy of manners, of mores, of missing identities. A screen version might skip the rich literary (French) references but the compensation of … Continue reading →

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Lincoln in the bardo by George Sanders (Bloomsbury)

Posted on June 18, 2018 by

“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

“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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