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 […]
It’s the oddest thing, but sometimes I ‘save’ an unread book. Maybe it’s as simple as knowing that I have a trip coming up, or maybe it’s more complicated and I know that there will be a point when I just need to really lose myself in a book. All The Light We Cannot See, […]
Would you go to a hen night/bachelorette party of a woman that you hadn’t seen since school? Nora does. Would you go even if you knew that you weren’t being invited to the wedding? Nora does. Yes it sounds implausible, but in the masterful hands of Ruth Ware, this horrendous social scenario becomes utterly plausible […]
Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders, makes no pretense about what it is, namely a rollicking good read. For those Netflix fans amongst you, Horowitz was the brains behind Midsomer Murders and as you read this book, it’s hard to forget this legacy. No one would ever accuse Midsommer Murders of being highbrow, but it is hard […]
To most of us married folks, open marriages seem like the most fascinating and mythical of beasts. Just as with a unicorn, I wouldn’t want one for myself (imagine the hair everywhere!), but if a friend had one, I would want to know as much as possible. So it was for me, twenty years or […]
When I was young I lived in London. All over London. Moving, as young renters do, approximately every twelve or eighteen months. What initially seemed like a fun way to live soon became a drag as flatmates moved in with boyfriends or went travelling. As I read JP Delaney’s novel, The Girl Before, I was […]
As with a silent companion, this book snuck up on me. I finished it two nights ago and have been thinking about it ever since as, just like a Henry James novel, I’m not entirely sure what I just read. Was it a descent into madness, was it a ghost story, a betrayal? What? What […]
Three Things About Elsie, by Joanna Cannon, made one thing very apparent to me and that’s how seldom we read about the elderly. There are of course many stories where a elderly person looks back across their life and reminisces about things past, but largely the action is set in those memories, during a time […]
I’m enjoying one of the most fantastic things life has to offer, the ‘excellent book roll’. To date this summer has been glorious, as I’ve moved from The Nightingale to The Perfect Stranger, on to the Magpie Murders, from there to How to Stop Time and then to Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. Oh Eleanor! […]
Nutshell Book Reviews 