The Woman in the Dunes – Kōbō Abe

I've just spent the morning reading this utterly brilliant and very disturbing 1964 novel from Japan's award-winning Kōbō Abe. Following a trip to look for new insects in a forgotten part of the coast, Niki Jumpei finds himself trapped in a sand dune pit with little hope of escape. The only other occupant in the …

Still Life – Sarah Winman

I've been in a real reading slump this spring (and my reviewing has hit an all-time low in terms of productivity). Thankfully, my sister-in-law sent me Winman's Still Life, and there's so much to love about this novel that I don't know where to start. It might just be easier if I list what I …

Bewilderment – Richard Powers

I got the 'this-will-be-amazing' tingles as I started this novel, and so it was - I will forever remember finishing reading Bewilderment in a beautifully sunny Somerset park on our way home from Cornwall, emotionally stunned by the ending and completely unaware of my surroundings and those physically around me. To read a book where …

The Power of the Dog – Thomas Savage

As with many rediscovered novels which find a new and enthusiastic readership, it's hard to see now why The Power of the Dog hasn't remained in print since its initial publication in 1967. It contains everything a classic American novel needs - taut family tensions heightened by physical isolation, a study of the type of …

The Wall – John Lanchester

'No choice - everything about the wall means you have no choice.' As with most dystopias, Lanchester's The Wall is a grim reminder of what we're messing up now. In his version of the (presumably) near-future, Britain's coastline is now a huge concrete wall, a structure guarded night and day against attacked from The Others. …

Small Things Like These – Claire Keegan

'Children pulled their hoods up before facing out to school, while their mothers, so used now to ducking their heads and running to the clothes line, or hardly daring to hang anything out at all, had little faith in getting so much a shirt dry before evening. And then the nights came on and the …

A Terrible Kindness – Jo Browning Wroe

The story of a young chorister who becomes an embalmer is an unlikely premise for a bestselling novel - but this will be a bestseller and it is brilliant. I knew within the first few pages that it would be going on my Top Ten Reads for 2022 - I haven't felt like this about …

Piranesi – Susanna Clarke

This is going to be a reasonably short review - term has begin and reading has been suspended for the foreseeable - but I had to attempt to get my thoughts down about Piranesi, Susanna Clarke's first novel in sixteen years before heading off to plan and mark. I was tempted to just put 'wtaf' …

The Fell – Sarah Moss

As I write, we're currently waiting to see if there will be new restrictions brought in over the next few days. But even if that is the case, we're not in the same unknowing state that we experienced back in 2020. In The Fell, a crisp and highly charged novel, Moss has now tackled the …

A Pin to See the Peepshow – F. Tennyson Jesse #BritishLibraryWomenWriters

Julia Almond, as a character says towards the end, ‘isn’t an ordinary woman.’ But she is a very recognisable woman in literature– a woman who uses whatever skills she has to better her existence, who craves nicer things, and who possessively guards her own room so she can sometimes be alone. She isn’t one of …