Book reviews

77 Articles
Book reviewsFiction

Partita, by Barbara Kingsolver – a blast from the past

Decades after Sigurd walked out of her life, Livia picks up the phone and hears him asking if he can visit. That call...

Book review of Ghalen, by Walter Mosley
Book reviewsFiction

Ghalen: Walter Mosley’s luminous portrait of a father and son

I finished Walter Mosley's Ghalen – A Romance in Black knowing I was leaving the glow that comes from the world Mosley builds...

A book review for A Better Life, by Lionel Shriver
Book reviewsFiction

A Better Life: Lionel Shriver brings America’s immigration argument home

Nico is in his late twenties, five years out from an electrical engineering degree, and living rent free with his divorced mother in...

Book reviewsNon-fiction

Julia Cameron, and the art of paying attention

'The Listening Path' isn't a book to race through to reach the end. I’ve been reading small sections each morning, after my morning...

Book reviewsFiction

The Emotional Punch of Colm Tóibín

I don't normally read short stories. I don't want to invest in characters who are only going to be with me for a...

Book reviewsFiction

Corruption, Betting and a Cricketer’s Secrets

Police corruption, rigged betting and a syndicate protecting its own means there's a lot going on in Hero, and DS Walker is the...

Book reviewsFiction

Humanity in the Dust

By the end of a working day, Constable Hirsch is bloated on cups of tea he didn't want, because he knows he's the...

Book reviewsFiction

The Mother Who Woke Up French

One morning Teresa wakes up speaking with a French accent, and her son Paddy – a speech therapist – can't explain it any...

Book reviewsFiction

A Reunion Novel from Ann Patchett

Eddie disappears from Daphne's life when she's nine, and it takes forty years and a chance meeting in a museum for either of...

Book reviewsFiction

A Quiet Life, Fully Seen

Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say allows us to do something that remains so elusive in real life: to know what is...