Darkmans
About eighteen years ago, I got a copy of Nicola Barker’s “Darkmans” for Christmas. It’s a hefty novel, one of those …
Books
60 posts
Bill Drummond, 45
45 is Bill Drummond’s sort of memoir, albeit one with a hazy memory of the events most readers (myself included) are likely to be …
Bob Mortimer, The Satsuma Complex
A hardback book called “The Satsuma Complex” is all that remains of a mysterious young lady that young lawyer Gary is chatting …
Tade Thompson, Rosewater
Rosewater is an exciting science fiction novel set several decades after first contact with an alien called Wormwood, that has established …
John Irving, The Imaginary Girlfriend
The Imaginary Girlfriend is a short autobiography by American author John Irving. In it, he explains the interwoven roles of writing and …
Laurent Binet, Civilisations
‘Civilisations’ is a counterfactual historical novel that attempts to extrapolate the future course of history after changing …
Rachel Cusk, Outline
Outline is the first of a trilogy of novels by Rachel Cusk. In it, the narrator is travelling to Athens to help teach on a creative writing …
Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War
This Is How You Lose the Time War is a short novella about two members of opposing factions (Red and Blue) engaged in a ’time war’: …
Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
Last year I started to write a review of Italo Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller”. I read it while we …
Richard Powers, Orfeo
“The mind may give up its desire to improve on creation and function as a faithful receiver of experience.” John Cage
George Saunders, Lincoln In The Bardo
I read this book on holiday in Belgium last year. Having forgotten to pack a novel I scoured almost every book in the Waterstones at St. …
Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation
I managed to read all of the foundation novels since I wrote about the first one. In this post, I’ll write about the next two, which covers …