The Cost of Living is my first Deborah Levy book, but I have questions for those of you who have had the good fortune to read others. Are they all this good? Do you always need to read them with a pen and piece of paper at your side to jot down beautiful quotes? Is […]
Living in northern California, close to San Francisco, I seldom have reason to ever really consider what life in Los Angeles must be like. In the last ten years, beyond the amusement parks that litter the LA suburbs, I’ve never had reason or need to visit. As a backpacking European in the 1990s, a friend […]
Do you know how hard it is to compile a ‘Top Ten’ list of what to read on vacation or holiday, or whatever you choose to call it?! I didn’t until I started this. When you love reading as much as I do, how can you possibly whittle down the list? Maybe I’m guilty of […]
Full disclosure with this one, I know Heidi Perks. We don’t know each other well, but for the last twenty-five years or so we have shared a very dear friend, Mrs D. This means we’ve been to parties, hen nights, that kind of thing together. I still hear about her whenever I go home, so […]
There are some books that you simply live as you read, part wishing that this life could be yours. Paris By The Book by Liam Callanan is one of them. Callanan tells the story of Leah, a mother of two girls, living in Milwaukee and married to novelist, Robert Eady. Robert has a good deal […]
If you know me at all, you will understand that I am not one of life’s happy campers. I can appreciate the beauty of the great outdoors without experiencing any desire at all to sleep in it. My back is designed to carry a simple day pack, not a tent or a stove. I value […]
I don’t know quite where I am with The Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon. It’s not the book I thought it was, but it’s none the worse for it, it’s just that I’m surprised. I don’t normally pick up books about the Middle East or indeed books that in anyway relate to the military […]
Many years ago, when Child Number One was very small and I still lived in London, my dear friend Ms S and I used to frequent any number of playgrounds to occupy our children and to fill our days. This was in an era long before the iPhone became ubiquitous, when it was still possible […]
For some reason I had it in my mind that Euphoria by Lily King was a first novel, so I went online to see if she had published a second. Much to my delight I found that she had published not one, but three novels previously of which I was unaware. Choices! Choices! I promptly […]
Reasons to Stay Alive is not the kind of book that I would normally pick up. I’m a fiction reader, pure and simple. I only did so because it happens to be written by the wonderful Matt Haig and because it tackles the issue of depression. Over the last few months it feels like a […]
Nutshell Book Reviews 