70 Reviews: 5. Innocent House by P.D. James (Pocket Penguins) #review

Whereas the other volumes covered so far in this boxset series have worked well as stand-alones, this one is definitely a teaser and I’m going to hunting out the complete novel, Original Sin, as soon as I’ve finished this review. And here comes reading-confession-time again – this is the first time I’ve read a PD …

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70 Reviews: 4. Summer in Algiers by Albert Camus (Pocket Penguins) #review

I had read some of Camus’ novels (in translation – my GCSE French textbook, the marvellous Tricolor, didn’t cover existential thought) and loved them. I had not, however, spent much time with his essays. This is another brilliant thing about this Penguin boxset challenge – I’m reading things I might otherwise have passed over because …

Nicole Harkin’s Tilting #BlogBlitz #Review

I guess that everyone has a moment in their childhood when they suddenly realise that what is normal in their house doesn’t necessarily happen in other homes. Usually this is something minor, something that ultimately becomes a familiar routine or in-joke. However, for some, this realisation can be more stark, more defining in terms of …

Philip Hensher’s The Friendly Ones #review

Picked up as an impulse buy (its proportions are pleasing - I liked the look and feel of it), The Friendly Ones has introduced me to a novelist who is undoubtedly going to become a firm favourite. I absolutely loved this novel, and its beauty is in the detail. We move between two families, swinging …

70 Reviews: 3. Otherwise Pandemonium by Nick Hornby (Pocket Penguins)

I’m onto the third volume in the Penguin 70s boxset and back into fiction territory. This is a pair of short stories by Nick Hornby, a writer I’m ashamed to say I’ve not read before (the films were so good that I just didn’t feel the need. Apologies – I now realise my error); the …

70 Reviews: 2. Cogs in the Great Machine by Eric Schlosser (Pocket Penguins)

An extract from his 2001 Fast Food Nation, Book 2 in the Penguin 70s collection is a damning exposé of safety practices in the meat industry of rural America. An investigative journalist, Schlosser has used his words to lay bare the mistreatment of workers and the abuses of power within this section of the mass-market …

70 Reviews: 1. Lady Chatterley’s Trial (Pocket Penguins)

Published to celebrate Penguin's 70th birthday, this collection has moved houses with us three times. Up until now, I’m ashamed to say it has remained largely unread. But now I’m going to be reviewing one a week, and I’m really looking forward to dipping into such a varied diet. First up is a set of …

An Interview with … Elisabeth Hobbes

Elisabeth Hobbes is the author of six historical Romance novels, all set in Northern England in the Medieval period. Her latest novel, Beguiled by the Forbidden Knight, has just been published. Its heroine, Aelfhild, finds herself swapping identities with her mistress, Lady Sigrun, in order to protect her from an unwanted Norman suitor. But he …

Robert Seethaler’s The Tobacconist (2016)

From the outset, we’re aware of a dry observational humour running throughout this devastating novel. A prominent local business man, with a tendency to be generous towards the women he’s sleeping with, dies in a thunderstorm. We’re told that ‘a conspicuous number of black-veiled women gathered around the grave.’ Franz’s mother is among the many …

Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle

‘Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea? Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me. Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep? Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!’ This has been on my TBR pile for a long time – I’d loved The Lottery when I came across it …