Tag / Book Review

Book Review A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier

This is the sort of book you put down reluctantly, immediately looking forward to the next time you can read it again. Tracy Chevalier beautifully conjures up England in the 1930’s: the clothes, the streets, the houses, the smells, the attitudes and the general way of life, in particular for women, a subject I am so interested in myself.

Thirty-eight year old Violet “escapes” her home town to go all of twelve...

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Book Review: Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

I bought this book thinking it was going to be about the Bloomsbury set: Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey etc. It was my own fault, I should have read the blurb more closely. It is, in fact, the biographies of five women who lived at one time or another in Mecklenburgh Square. Much of the “biography” is not, in fact, about their time in the square and to call them biographies is also misleading: they’re more sort of “potted histories” of some of their...

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Book Review: Those Who Are Loved by Victoria Hislop

What a disappointment this book was! I really enjoyed The Island by the same author and I know her books are highly thought of and well researched. The main problem with this one I think is that I couldn’t relate to the main character. I couldn’t see her in my mind or feel her thoughts and feelings. It’s the same with all the characters in this book: they lack depth and feeling. They’re almost caricatures. It’s as though she has wanted to tell a chunk of history...

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Book Review: Catch Me When I Fall by Nicci French

  This is one of those books that stays with you long after you’ve finished reading it. The description in the first chapter of the heroine’s drink and drug fuelled night out was just incredible. I’ve never had a night out like that (thank goodness!) but I really could feel what it must be like.  It’s easy to look back and find holes in the plot, easy to see too that the characters are a bit too obvious: the crazy girl, the loyal husband, the even more loyal friend. It’s...

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Book Review After the Party by Cressida Connellly

I agree with the reviews that say, “I’ve never read anything like it.” From the very beginning this novel is different: written in a style that evokes a different time period. It takes a while to get used to this: the main protagonist, Phyllis, comes across as a cold character, with very few redeeming factors. In fact, this first impression doesn’t improve and is one of the main criticisms I have of this book: Phyllis lacks any real depth: her feelings for her husband, children and family are at all times cold and distant....

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Book Review City of Friends Joanna Trollope I wouldn't say that Joanna Trollope is one of my favourite authors but I have certainly enjoyed some of her novels, particularly Other People’s Children and Marrying the Mistress, both of which could be said to have influenced my own novel on divorce, re-marriage and step-children Out of Step. Jonanna Trollope’s novels are well-crafted....

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This is it

Book Review “This Must Be The Place” by Maggie O’Farrell Maggie O’Farrell is one of the writers who has influenced my own writing style. She has a way of delving into people’s minds, describing family and relationship dynamics and producing believable characters that I try to emulate. The two books by her that I have read and enjoyed are “Instructions for a Heatwave” and “My Lover’s Lover”. “This Must Be the Place” starts brilliantly. I really loved the style and pace of the writing and the way the characters are introduced...

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Not Boyd’s Best

Book review Sweet Caress by William Boyd

A new Boyd book, I was so excited. Ever since I read Armadillo I have loved William Boyd, although as with most authors, I have found some of his books disappointing. I didn't particularly enjoy Restless or his James Bond outing Solo. Brazzaville Beach is probably my favourite, followed closely by Armadillo, and I loved Any Human Heart. Sweet Caress could almost be seen as a female version of Any Human Heart, the biography of a woman from her earliest memory to almost the day of her death.  This is what Boyd does...

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Unimpressed by The Miniaturist

Book Review The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

I picked this book up several times in various bookshops before I finally decided to buy it, manly because my niece said she was in the middle of reading it and said she “couldn’t put it down. Like her, I was, to begin with, similarly beguiled, immediately drawn by the setting, the attention to detail, the evocation of the atmosphere of seventeenth century Amsterdam. The descriptions were so accurate it was like stepping into one of those paintings of the interiors of Dutch houses and then out into...

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You not for me

Book Review “The Book of You" by  Claire Kendal

Yet another thriller, a genre I don’t normally read, but it caught my eye in Waterstones and I found myself fascinated by the blurb. This, coupled with the fact that I had enjoyed the thrillers I had read recently so much, made me decide to give this new book a try. It started out well. I liked the style, the easy way of writing, the way I felt I know the main protagonist right from the outset. We like her yet we can see she has faults. She is quite weak, easily led. So to begin with I raced through it, scarcely...

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