A Good School (1978): Richard Yates

January 12, 2019April 8, 20202 Comments

★★★½

This is the first novel I’ve read by Richard Yates, although Revolutionary Road has been on my TBR list ever since the film (which I haven’t actually seen) came out. I wasn’t sure what to expect beyond a vague sense of classic American sensibilities being placed under the microscope. In a sense, this semi-autobiographical novel was an easy way in, playing to my interest in school stories, as it follows the young William Grove through two years at the isolated Dorset Academy in Connecticut. Around Grove’s story swirls those of the other boys and the masters at this odd, struggling school; while Pearl Harbour looms on the horizon, and war threatens to change the Dorset boys forever.

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Nefertiti (1998): Joyce Tyldesley

January 5, 2019April 8, 20207 Comments

★★★★

Unlocking the Mystery surrounding Egypt’s Most Famous and Beautiful Queen

Writing about icons is a difficult business. Even biographers of modern stars like Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley must wade through a morass of secrets, theories and fantasies. How much more difficult to choose a subject who lived 3,500 years ago, who emerged from nowhere, disappeared back into obscurity, and whose brief, glittering existence has been the subject of fierce iconoclasm! Thanks to the glorious portrait bust in Berlin (see below), Nefertiti is one of the most recognisable figures from Ancient Egypt, but the facts of her life remain tantalisingly elusive. As Joyce Tyldesley teases out the meaning of symbols, inscriptions and sculpted reliefs, Nefertiti’s lost world blossoms into life, in an archaeological story that reads like a detective novel. This is a tale of religious revolution, intrigue, iconoclasm, romance, and mysterious, powerful women. What’s not to like?

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Three-Martini Lunch (2016): Suzanne Rindell

January 2, 2019April 8, 20202 Comments

★★★★

It’s 1958 in New York and change is in the air. In the shabby streets of Greenwich Village, hipsters listen to jazz, argue about politics, experiment with performance art and dream of changing the world. Into this feverish place come three young people, seeking lives that’ll allow them to become their true inner selves. Privileged Cliff Nelson is running away from a life of upper-class bourgeoisie, confident of astonishing the world with the brilliant novels he’ll produce. Eden Katz comes east from Indiana, dreaming of being an editor in a publishing industry which has little place for women. And Miles Tillman tries to find a world that accepts all his facets, as a young black man from Harlem with a top-flight education and a passion for words. By the end of the story, these three young lives will have intertwined in a compelling story of love, ambition, tragedy and betrayal.

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Merry Christmas!

December 23, 201813 Comments

Christmas has crept up on me this year. As you’ll be able to tell from my recent silence, I’ve been very busy for the last few months and haven’t even been able to read that many books. My adventurous year finished in grand style with a trip to glorious (and very cold!) St Petersburg last week, during which I spent most of my time either exploring the Hermitage in starry-eyed fashion, scurrying around in -10°C temperatures, or tucking into really excellent Georgian food. Now I’m back in the country with my parents, gearing up for a nice quiet Christmas full of good food, games and festive TV. This is my chance, as usual, to thank you all for continuing to read the blog and a big Christmassy hug for those of you who comment, engage and recommend new things. So I wish you all a very happy holiday, however you choose to spend it, full of fun and relaxation, and a New Year full of health, happiness and success.

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Lock In (2014): John Scalzi

December 10, 2018April 8, 2020Leave a comment

★★★★

Yesterday was my last free day before the New Year, so I indulged myself with a book binge, having been to the library on Saturday. John Scalzi’s novel is already tipped as being a modern sci-fi classic, its central concept all too plausible for an alarmingly near future. Set in a world some fifteen years in the future, it shows us the aftermath of Haden’s Syndrome, a global flu-like epidemic, which leaves many of its sufferers ‘locked in’ to their bodies. Thanks to a rapid advance in science, these ‘Hadens’ are able to access and interact with the world through specially-implanted neural pathways which allow them to control mechanised bodies, or ‘threeps’ (named for C-3PO). One such Haden is Chris Shane, the only child of a wealthy would-be senator, who contracted the disease as an infant and has spent his life as the poster-boy for an increasingly powerful lobby group. But now he wants to escape his privilege and give something back, working as an FBI agent. It’s just sod’s law that his first day on the job coincides with a murder case that looks set to upend everything he knows. Part sci-fi, part FBI gumshoe procedural, this is a ridiculously gripping book stuffed with incredible ideas.

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A Change of Time (2015): Ida Jessen

December 1, 2018April 8, 2020Leave a comment

★★★★½

You must forgive the recent erratic posting. Life has been getting in the way, with lectures and work trips flying at me from all directions, plus some very pleasant socialising. Besides, WordPress have just introduced a new editor which isn’t quite as intuitive as I’d like. But never mind. I’m bumbling on as best I can, and have just finished reading a really gorgeous little book: A Change of Time by the Danish author Ida Jessen. Through her diary, a widowed school-teacher in early 20th-century Denmark remembers her late husband and uses her loneliness as a spur to revisit her life and, slowly, anxiously, recover her sense of self. For once, cover and book coexist beautifully: Jessen’s novel is like a Hammershøi in prose: a haunting, timeless, intimate exploration of loss, rendered by the translator Martin Aitken into elegantly spare English. Although the book won’t be published until March, I just had to write about it now, before the feeling of it fades; and it’s deeply suited to these long, dark winter evenings. A little jewel.

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Deposed (2017): David Barbaree

November 26, 2018April 8, 20203 Comments

★★★½

A remote prison in the scrubland outside Rome, 68 AD. The kind of place that you’re sent when the world wants to forget that you even exist. One afternoon, as young Marcus runs errands at the jail, he sees a new prisoner brought in. A man who has been blinded and brutalised, whom the guards treat with scorn as they leave, who has been brought here to be forgotten. A man named Nero. Eleven years later, Rome has settled into the rule of Vespasian, though the struggles of rival would-be emperors are fresh enough to make life difficult for his son Titus, who has taken charge of keeping the peace. Old factions die hard in Rome. And then, one day, news comes of a new arrival in the city. A senator from distant Spain, unknown to anyone. A blind man, with a young man named Marcus at his side, who has come with a great fortune to play his part in Rome’s future.

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Kings of the Wyld (2017): Nicholas Eames

November 25, 2018April 8, 20204 Comments

★★★★

The Band: Book I

They used to be epic. There was a time when Clay Cooper and his old band Saga used to raise the roof: their deeds the stuff of popular songs and breathless admiration. They broke sieges, slew monsters and (almost) killed a dragon. Each of their members was a legend in his own right (apart from their series of short-lived, unfortunate bards). But that was a long time ago now. Twenty long years separate Clay Cooper from the glory of Saga’s heyday and, when the frontman Gabriel turns up on his doorstep, begging Clay to help him get the band back together, Clay is tempted to say no. They’re old men, now, after all: he has a wife and daughter, and he’s turned his back on the Clay Cooper of old. But Gabriel needs their help to track down his own missing daughter. Before Clay quite knows what’s happened, he’s setting out with his old friend to do the impossible: to reunite Saga for one last, great, glorious farewell tour.

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False Lights (2017): K.J. Whittaker (republished as Hester and Crow: Katy Moran)

November 11, 2018April 8, 20206 Comments

★★★★

I always love getting recommendations. Honestly, it brightens up my day every time. When RT enthused to me about this book, I realised it was already in my TBR pile and promptly moved it to the top of the list. And I’ve devoured it at high speed. It opens in 1817, two years since Napoleon scraped a narrow victory at Waterloo and placed his brother Jérôme on the English throne. Now English curfews are enforced by French troops and English patriots executed by French guillotines, and discontent is rising. We follow three characters into the heart of this powder-keg: Kitto Helford, an aristocratic fourteen-year-old with patriotic ambitions; his older brother Crow, the laconic Earl of Lamorna, whose withering arrogance hides a soul traumatised by war; and Hester Harewood, the resourceful daughter of a dashing (black) naval officer.

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