Putney – Sofka Zinovieff
Rating: 4 stars Putney charts the tale of Daphne and Ralph; set mostly in and around her family home by the river in Putney, the scene shifts between the 1970s and [...]
Our Endless Numbered Days – Claire Fuller
Rating: 5 stars Peggy is the narrator of Claire Fuller’s remarkable first novel, which won the 2015 Desmond Elliot Prize for debut novels. Her story opens in November 1985 when she finds [...]
Kneebones and Legbones – a Treatise on Handwriting
Louise, from Chapter and Verse Reviews, on the benefits of handwriting. We don’t use our hands, except for scrolling, and it’s becoming a health crisis. According to Professor Kneebone (genuine [...]
Swimming Lessons – Claire Fuller
Rating: 5 stars I was hooked from the start by the tremendous opening of Fuller’s novel: “Gil Coleman looked down from the first-floor window of the bookshop and saw his dead [...]
One Moonlit Night – Caradog Prichard (translated by Philip Mitchell)
Rating: 5 stars This was not a book I would have come across on my own. Originally written in Welsh, and chosen by my local book club, One Moonlit Night was a [...]
The Sealwoman’s Gift – Sally Magnusson
Rating: 4 stars The Sealwoman’s Gift is a historical novel about the 1627 kidnapping of 400 Icelanders from the Westmann Isles by pirates who took them to Algiers and sold them [...]
Lullaby – Leïla Slimani: Lavinia’s Book Pick, September 2018
Lullaby is the story of the murder of two young children by their nanny. That’s not a spoiler – that’s how it opens. It’s tense, tight, and enigmatic throughout. There’s a [...]
The Music Shop – Rachel Joyce
Rating: 4.5 stars Rachel Joyce is one of my favourite contemporary authors – I absolutely loved her recent collection of short stories, A Snow Garden, reviewed here earlier this year, as well as her three previous novels. [...]
The Last Mrs Parrish – Liv Constantine
Rating: 4 stars The Last Mrs Parrish, by a sister writing duo who work under the name ‘Liv Constantine’, is a sort of Rebecca-in-reverse; we begin by following the shallow and ambitious [...]
Big Little Lies – Liane Moriarty
Rating: 5 stars Big Little Lies was a birthday gift for which I am extremely grateful. I was totally hooked from start to end, and it’s a book that starts (very [...]