Category Archives: fiction

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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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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Dirt Music by Tim Winton (Penguin)

Posted on February 9, 2018 by drewsmith28

“One night in November, another that had somehow become morning while she sat there, Georgie Jutland looked up to see her pale and furious face reflected in the window.” THE best place to read this might be on the new … Continue reading →

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The Dry by Jane Harper (Abacus)

Posted on January 22, 2018 by drewsmith28

“Even those who didn’t darken the door of the church from one Christmas to the next could tell there would be more mourners than seats.” AS in all worthwhile whodunnits, everyone in this small dirt town comes under suspicion. We … Continue reading →

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Winter by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)

Posted on December 8, 2017 by drewsmith28

“God was dead, to begin with. Romance was dead. Chivalry was dead.” WHEN, finally, we get everyone into the same room, the intimacy starts to crackle. Ali Smith is at her best when she has people talking to each other. … Continue reading →

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Autumn by Ali Smith (Penguin)

Posted on November 24, 2017 by drewsmith28

“It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.” FROM the getgo this tale is populated with popular images like the variation on Charles Dickens opening to a Tale of Two Cities above, although here is the … Continue reading →

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