West by Carys Davies

Review by

West

Chasing shadows in the Wild West

I have a soft spot for anything Wild West (yes, I did watch a fair bit of The Little House on the Prairie as a kid), so when West by Carys Davies came along I wasn’t hard to convince. It’s the short story of widower Cy Bellman who sets out from Pennsylvania in 1815 to find rumoured gigantic beasts after reading about the discovery of ancient bones in a newspaper. Left behind, in the care of strict Aunt Julia, is his 10-year-old daughter Bess. Like many a mid-life crisis, this one doesn’t end well.

Read full Review

Get Newsletters from Bookstoker

* = required field
The Porpoise by Mark Haddon

Review by

The Porpoise

A nail-biting literary joyride

Two pages into The Porpoise by Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident Of the Dog in the Night Time) I was utterly hooked and only emerged bleary-eyed a day later after what felt like a roller-coaster ride. The book interweaves a contemporary story with one from antiquity, and whereas that might turn some of you off, it really shouldn’t. The Porpoise is first class, breakneck paced storytelling. A sort of literary Mission Impossible.

Read full Review

The Wall by John Lanchester

Review by

The Wall

Thought provoking eco-dystopian novel

The Wall by John Lanchester is an eco-dystopian novel set in the near future, this is a dark and mesmerising vision of what happens when borders become walls, when the world is divided into ‘us’ and ‘others’, and when the young despise the old for what they allowed to happen on their watch.

Read full Review

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

Review by

Machines Like Me

Don't bother

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan is set in London in the 1980s, only these are not the 1980s we know, but rather a sort of Sliding Doors variant of the that time. Thatcher is in power but has lost, rather than won, the Falklands War. Computer genius Alan Turing, the breaker of the Enigma code, has not committed suicide, as he did in real life, but is alive and well. He has invented the world wide web, solved some unsolvable scientific conundrums and taken the world way past 2019 in terms of technological advances. McEwan, always with his finger on the pulse of the world we live in, has noble ambitions with this novel. Sadly, it just doesn’t work.

Read full Review

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Review by

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

An engrossing murder mystery unlike any you’ve ever read before.

Set in a crumbling gothic mansion at the edge of a forest on the night of a glittering ball, a beautiful young woman is about to be murdered. Using established tropes from 1920s murder mysteries, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton, winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2018, is a very modern take on the genre. It’s an intricately plotted, disorientating, dark and immersive read that will keep you guessing right until the end.

Read full Review

News by

Introducing…The Emergency Poet

In part three of our Bookish Delights series, we’re thrilled to introduce you to the Emergency Poet, dispenser of verse for troubled souls. This is such a lovely idea. Billed as the world’s first and only mobile poetic first aid service, Deborah Alma, aka The Emergency Poet, originally travelled around in her 1970’s ambulance, offering consultations and prescriptions for ‘areas of emotional need’, such as love, ageing or grief.

Read more

So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Review by

So Much Longing In So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch

A brilliant introduction to the non-canonical Munch

With a new exhibition on at the British Museum entitled ‘Edvard Munch: Love and Angst’, the English publication of  So Much Longing In So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch by Karl Ove Knausgaard is timely. The book was written when Knausgaard was co-curating the exhibition ‘Mot Skogen’ (‘To the forest’) at the Munch Museum in Oslo in 2017, a task he took on despite acknowledging that ‘my only qualification was that I liked looking at paintings and often browsed through art books.’

Read full Review

Can reading heal?

News by

Can reading heal?

Been dumped by the boyfriend? Done something stupid? Lost someone you love? Or just in need of some quick TLC? Can reading heal? I believe so and have written about some quick-literary fixes for the Wildsmith Papers. Curious? Then read more here: The Literary Cure

Lanny by Max Porter

Review by

Lanny

Another puzzle from Max Porter

Max Porter’s books are wonderfully strange things. They are novels, but occasionally seem to wander into the realm of poetry. The language is sparse, distilled down to the very essence of what he wants to communicate. The sentences twist and turn; literally, in this case. The first few pages of his new book were incomprehensible to me, but somehow Porter lures you in and doesn’t let you go. Lanny by Max Porter is set in a quintessential English village, where Lanny, an exceptionally creative, talented boy, his banker dad and author mum have just moved. But becoming part of this closed community is not a smooth ride. I’m not sure I liked Lanny as much as Porter’s first book, Grief is the Thing With Feathers, which I loved, but still think it’s a worthwhile read.

Read full Review