Whistler, by Ann Patchett
I was over a third of the way through this book and asking myself, what’s with the horse on the cover? My God, Ann Patchett is an incredibly clever writer. I’m a huge fan: The Dutch House, Tom Lake, State of Wonder are all big favourites of mine. Whistler is the best of all of them. Don’t worry about the horse. The horse will come back.
Continue reading “Whistler – book reveiw”Land, by Maggie O’Farrell
Firstly, what an incredibly beautiful cover! The colours of rich earth and moody sky and deep wells in the Irish landscape that a reader might fall into and never find their way back as happened to several characters in this book, though we’ll never really know why. This is a novel dripping with the mist of superstitions, damp with hidden meanings, fractured with the bones of ancestors lying under the soil. A worthy successor to Hamnet, then, and absolutely ripe for those happy to believe in the hocus pocus of sacred springs and gollum-like fish. Judging by book sales, that’s a great many of us. ‘Give me the ring, it says’ (the fish).
Continue reading “Land – book review”The Paper Palace, by Miranda Cowley Heller
This felt like an over-crafted book from the start. We get the climax scene (haha, literally) and then, in dribs-and-drabs, the day that builds up to it and the day that follows, jabbed through with a long (and perhaps irrelevant?) history of the protagonist, her mother, her grandmother, her father – so many back-story characters slowing down the read. I just wanted to skip over them and get back to the main plot.
Continue reading “The Paper Palace – book review”
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