I used to think that Jane Green understood me, personally. It’s the one foot in England and one foot in the US thing, that gives her a comforting transatlantic reliability in my mind. I know that the stories will be good and that she writes about what I know, namely the cultural and emotional differences […]
Like finding a good man, you sometimes need to meet the right book at the right time. In retrospect and due to a misunderstanding with my good friend Mrs P, I found this book at the wrong time. The House We Grew Up In isn’t really the kind of book that you read when you […]
I’ve said it before and will no doubt say it again, but I don’t believe in persevering with books that you are not enjoying. If a book doesn’t grab me in the first sixty or seventy pages, sometimes sooner, I can be pretty damn sure that things aren’t going to change. Why then, did I […]
It would be impossible to write about Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin, without referencing Monica Lewinsky because that’s the kind of story that this is and sadly, when you think about political sex scandals in the US, even twenty-something years later, that’s still where our minds go. That said, Zevin knows this and uses […]
I at once loved Dept. Of Speculation by Jenny Offill and had to acknowledge that I had never read anything quite like it. It’s so beautiful and well done that frankly it has rendered me bereft of words to describe it. To tell you what this story is about, hardly seems to do it justice […]
Years and years and years ago, a book was published called Ralph’s Party. It was chick lit and I just loved it. The writer was Lisa Jewell and in very quick succession I demolished whatever she wrote. I remember my old boss and friend, Mrs N, who always seemed to be invited to the best […]
Looking back, I’m pretty sure that over the years I have read umpteen Jojo Moyes novels, most enjoyably The Last Letter from Your Lover and Me Before You, which unquestionably took the her career into the stratosphere and really is a book that you should read if you haven’t already. Her rise as the doyenne […]
On a recent trip to Chicago, I arrived at the airport far too early with my son. This is a genetic failing on my part. I always need to be at the airport hours before my plane takes off, ‘just to be safe’. The Husband who feels just the opposite and would leave it until […]
The idea of a story centered around a perverse concept of ageing or death is not in itself new. Certainly in recent years the film industry has shown us Brad Pitt ageing backwards in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Blake Lively frozen in time in the beautiful Age of Adaline. Clare North gave […]
Reach for that box of tissues. You are going to cry. I fully acknowledge that I was late to the party with this book. For what seemed like years, I had seen it in Bookshop Santa Cruz and mentally labeled it ‘another war novel’. I approached The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah, somewhat jaded after the […]
Nutshell Book Reviews 