Stephen Fry has a terribly British way of writing, a bit like Bill Bryson, so fans of his TV work with Hugh Laurie or as host on QI know what to expect. His humour is dry, self deprecating, and apologetic for his privileged background. In this book, he writes the memoirs of his early years, until …
Category: book reviews
Lud-In-The-Mist – Hope Mirrlees
I’d actually never heard of this one before, and came across it randomly from a more hard-core fantasy fan than me. It’s a novel from the 1920’s by a contemporary of Virginia Woolf who amusingly referred to the author as “prickly and perverse…rather conspicuously well dressed” and whom Neil Gaiman champions as a lost author …
Kate Remembered: A Personal Biography by A Scott Berg
From the Pulliter Prize winning biographer, A Scott Berg's aim is to write a personal account of his time as Hepburn's friend and confidante, as well share many of the stories told in the long interview sessions they had during their twenty year long friendship. In a way, it's an odd sort of biography, untraditional …
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The Girl Who Fell From The Sky – Simon Mawer
During World War II, Britain sent spies into Occupied France, many of whom were women. This book tells the story of what that experience would have been like. Marian Sutro has fled to England with her parents and brother, and finds herself selected, as a French speaker, to go undercover to France to assist …
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
A novel in letters, the sole novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and completed and published posthumously by her relative, Annie Barrows. In tone, it’s very much like the letters between the Mitford sisters, and is by turns funny, delightful, tragic and touching. It follows protagonist Juliet, a writer, who receives a letter from a man …
American Gods – Neil Gaiman
Stephen King meets Terry Pratchett, this book is a bit of a doorstopper, (I read the “authors preferred text” which has some parts added back in, making it a bit longer). Following a man called Shadow, who gets out of prison to find that his wife and best friend have just died, and takes up …
The Confectioner’s Tale – Laura Madeleine
After reading my first Patrick White, I reached for a book with a pretty cover and a romantic storyline. The Confectioners Tale is a sweet story of romance, cake and Paris just before the war, and a university student in England who finds a photograph in her recently deceased Grandfathers things with a note begging …
Happy Valley – Patrick White
Written when the author was just 27, this book about characters in small town Australia contains elements of stream of consciousness and experimental literature that made it famous at the time, and yet White would not allow it’s reprint in his life time. An excellent first time novel, something about the story and characters feels …
Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
Murakami's novels are kind of an acquired taste and are generally a normal story that's a bit weird. In this story, the narrator feels compelled to return to a hotel he stayed in years before, because he feels that someone is calling him back there, possibly a girl he used to be in a …
The Boy Who Could See Demons by Carolyn Jess-Cooke
This was an unusual book, I really enjoyed the mystery of whether the boy could see demons, or only thought he could! The story is about The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and how much that has effected the mental health of the people who have lived through trauma there. Which sounds depressing, but it's actually …
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