Charlie Laidlaw’s Being Alert!

As the title suggests, Laidlaw, author of The Things We Learn When We’re Dead and The Space Between Time, has now turned his eye to our current situation, and has written an extremely strong satire on the UK Government's response to the pandemic in the first half of this year. I loved Spitting Image the …

Tea is So Intoxicating – Mary Essex (British Library Women Writers)

To my shame, this is the first time I’ve read Ursula Bloom in any of her many authorial guises. As Mary Essex, Bloom wrote at least eight books (that I can find) and here provides us with a somewhat spiky rural village comedy. Not many of her characters are particularly likeable, and she has a …

The New Wilderness – Diane Cook

This took me a little while to get into – the premise of a group of volunteers becoming nomads in The Wilderness State as part of an experiment as escape polluted city life is really quite challenging from the outset – but Cook’s been clever with her tale, and I was caught up in this …

The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman

I'm half way through my annual self-imposed task of reading the Booker shortlist - but then this appeared and I had to put everything else aside. I have really enjoyed Osman's first foray into fiction - it was the perfect thing for a rainy weekend and confirmed my feeling that Osman is one of those …