I think what strikes you first about de Bernieres is how human is writing is. It's mundane, describes the ordinary, or perhaps ordinary people caught up in history, in change. While war wages around the sleeping, pastoral island of Cephallonia, for example, goats must still be milked, fathers scolded and meals shared, distant politics debated, …
Continue reading Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
I came across this book via a recommendation on Amazon, based on previous purchases of historical fiction, and I loved the cover, but this tale is not like regular historical fiction, really. It is set in Devon in the mid 1300's during a time of plague, and tells the story of three people: a woman …
This was part of my last years reading list and it's very naughty of me to have only just finished reading it! The final, incomplete and posthumous work of the famous author it was about half complete at the time of Dickens death and much speculation about the ending has amused generations. The book …
Continue reading The Mystery Of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens
A dark fairy tale for older children or young teens, this one will also appeal to some adults too. With beautiful, dark illustrations, the book follows the story of a boy called Connor whose mother is very, very sick and who is visited by a monster who says it will tell him three stories …
Continue reading A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness & Siobhan Dowd
An interesting story about a teenage girl from America who moves to London to attend a boarding school. As she touches down, someone has started murdering in the same style as Jack the Ripper, and the first murder has occurred right near her new school. As the killings stack up, our heroine Rory starts …
I had a lot of texts to read, and things always get crazy in the lead up to Christmas, but happily, with the temperature dropping & finally nowhere to go & no one demanding time I could curl up with this, the second book in the Tradd Street series by Karen White. Revolving around …
This book tells two stories about two girls. One a child acting out to deal with the loss and change around her, as her physician father moves closer to his work in what she calls a human zoo. The other, a young woman who appears on a road leading to Vienna, naked, beaten and telling …
In this story of psychological horror, a young doctor takes a position at an out of the way hospital for the mentally ill, where a new form of therapy is being undertaken on six damaged women, who are kept under permanent sedation in the Sleep Room. As the doctor notices the women's sleep cycles synchronising, strange …
A delightful book of adult fairy tales, from the author of Johnathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and set mostly in the same world, though involing different characters and timescales. I would suggest, for book lovers, to get it in hardback, because it is an illustrated book, and the paperback version does not do it justice. …
Continue reading The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke
I like Alice Hoffman books, with their subtle magic, darkness and everyday lives. I had forgotten that she also wrote young adult fiction, so when I ordered this one, it looked more like a novella. It's a sad book, the story of a 15 year old girl, whose parents and sister head into the city …
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