Review: Mothering Sunday by Sara James

Friday, March 19, 2021

Mothering Sunday is a rich and compulsive novel, opening in 2019 with one mother, Ally, finding out that she was adopted as a baby. Transported to 1963, we meet many more mothers, each complex, flawed and entirely motivated by love for their child. Following Kitty,...

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata review: this essential worker deserves a second look

Friday, June 12, 2020

‘When you work in a convenience store, people often look down on you for working there. I find this fascinating, and I like to look them in the face when they do this to me. And as I do so I always think: that’s what a human is.’   Lockdown has...

Review: ‘My Sister, The Serial Killer’ by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Thursday, August 15, 2019

When I saw that Oyinkan Braithwaite’s novel ‘My Sister, The Serial Killer’ had been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019, I bought a copy immediately. I can’t remember the last time I bought a book without at least glancing at the synopsis, but the title...

Review: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Monday, April 8, 2019

Not really being a fan of murder mystery or ‘who dunnit?’ plotlines, I was initially sceptical of Stuart Turton’s debut novel ‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’. Yet, given its critical acclaim as winner of the Costa Book Awards 2018, I thought that there must be...

Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ – Review

Monday, February 25, 2019

“She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life”   Sally Rooney’s...