A finely nuanced story. Warm, tender and funny, as well as moving. Stella and Gerry, in late middle age are having a break in Amsterdam. They have the kinds of habits that only develop over a long marriage – kissing in a lift if they’re on their own, always holding hands to cross roads. Then … More Review: Midwinter Break

by Sophie Divry published by: MacLehose Press, 2017 The French title of the novel La Condition Pavillonnaire, could be literally translated as ‘Suburban Life’, but for an English reader the Flaubert reference is made explicit. Madame Bovary of the Suburbs focuses on a woman (like Flaubert’s heroine) who marries a dull, plodding, timid man ‘a … More Review: Madame Bovary of the Suburbs

by: Matt Barnard published by: Eyewear Publishing Ltd, 2017 Eyewear Publishing aims to produce beautifully-designed, brilliantly-written, affordable books and has a great track record of publishing new and interesting poets. Matt Barnard’s debut pamphlet is an excellent collection of eclectic and wide-ranging poems that combine musicality with precise language; often surprising and entertaining, and always … More Review: The Bends

* * * * * Ian Bledsoe, red-haired and ‘a professional big heart’, has been discredited and disinherited, so leaves the U S to make a last ditch attempt at starting over on the holiday island of Patmos. Charlie, his childhood friend, runs a business letting out luxury yachts and, very soon takes Ian on … More Review: The Destroyers

by Roy Jacobsen, trans. Don Bartlett & Don Shaw published by MacLehose Press, an imprint of Quercus Books [August 2016] My rating ***** Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017 The Unseen is a powerful evocation of the lives of a family living on Barroy, a tiny, remote Norwegian island at the beginning of … More Review: The Unseen

Honored to see Spoils in such excellent company. via The 2017 Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize Long List — Brian Van Reet

In A Secret Sisterhood, Emily Midorikawa & Emma Claire Sweeney explore the often forgotten, or glossed-over, friendships between women writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Historically, male literary friendships whether supportive or acrimonious, have been meticulously scrutinised and recorded, with whole volumes devoted to: Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Verlaine and … More Review: A Secret Sisterhood

Thanks to Penguin for including me on the blog tour of Clare Fisher’s stunning debut novel All the Good Things. Do look at other blogs too! Ali: Thank you, Clare for agreeing to speak to me about your writing, and the publication of your debut novel All the Good Things. What I find compelling about … More My interview with Clare Fisher about ‘All the Good Things’

My rating ***** My review A stand-up comedian, Dovaleh G invites a retired judge to watch his show. Afterwards he wants to know what you saw…What do people know when they look at me…the thing that comes out of a person without his control. But it’s hardly an evening of comedy: even when he laughs, … More Review: ‘A Horse Walks into a Bar’

published by Faber & Faber, 2017 **** Well I’m gay and Frances is a communist. Frances and Bobbi, both twenty-one and very bright, are university students in Dublin. They’ve had a gay relationship but are still best friends; Frances is an aspiring writer and she and Bobbi perform spoken word poetry at night. When they … More Review: Conversations with Friends