In Love and Trouble, by Alice Walker
5/5 I have loved reading this book. In the last few weeks it’s felt as if I haven’t been able to stop, but each time I picked Alice Walker’s collection of short stories, I felt as if time was suspended...
View ArticleNovel Insights’ Top 12 Books – 2011
I am savouring my last day off work today and feeling a little bit smug to be sat indoors out of the rain with nothing more taxing to do than mull over my favourite books of the past year. Actually, …...
View ArticleThe Visitor, by Maeve Brennan
3/5 Originally written in the 1940s, The Visitor is a novella about a young woman named Anastasia, who returns to Ireland after living in Paris for six years. When she arrives, her Grandmother – Mrs...
View ArticleEline Vere by Louis Couperus
5/5 I planned to spend Sunday reading through extracts from the Waterstone’s Eleven choices, that I picked up on Thursday, but instead gave in to my desire to finish the last 80 pages of the WONDERFUL...
View ArticleThe Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
4/5 In The Red Tent, Anita Diamant takes a fleeting moment in the Old Testament of the Bible and transforms it into an epic narrative. Dinah is a biblical character around which a violent set of events...
View ArticleHotel Iris, by Yoko Ogawa
3/5 Hotel Iris both fascinated me, and made me feel a little bit sick. I am not usually put off by books with disturbing themes, rather the opposite in fact – I’m a fan of authors with a dark edge – …...
View ArticleAnne Frank – Diary of a Young Girl
5/5 At almost twice the age Anne was when she write the last lines in her famous diary, I think back and try to remember back to my own inner-monologue as a teenager. On one hand I wonder at her...
View ArticleAnd here are the books I read while I was away…
Over the past few months I guess I maybe haven’t read as much as I usually would. I’m not sure if that was just being very busy doing other things, or a bit of reading-fatigue. I do think I felt less …...
View ArticleSweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan
4/5 If you are a fan of Ian McEwan’s writing then Sweet Tooth shouldn’t disappoint. Set in the early 1970s in the shadow of the Cold War and IRA violence, the story follows Sylvia Frome, an attractive...
View ArticleThe Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller
5/5 The Song of Achilles is the first book that I have read in recent months that has really transported me to another world. I was so wrapped up in the story, that I was thinking about it frequently...
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