In Our Mad & Furious City by Guy Gunaratne
A beautifully written and highly compelling read, the story is told in the first person by five characters with very distinct voices: Three teenage friends, Selvon, Yusuf and Ardan, and two of their parents: Ardan’s mother Caroline and Selvon’s father Nelson. I struggled to get into it at first, but I persevered as it was […]
Marnie by Winston Graham
I first read this book years ago, and remember enjoying it hugely, absolutely loving the amoral heroine (anti-heroine?), Marnie, and the very tangled web she weaves for herself. I was about to give my copy to our local Oxfam bookshop along with a stack of others, but made the mistake of opening it again, and […]
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
What an astonishingly beautiful and haunting book this is. Told by the teenage Esch, it’s the story of the four motherless Batiste siblings and their hard-drinking father in the twelve days’ run-up up to Hurricane Katrina. I read the last third of this book in a state of high tension with a lump in my […]
Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson
The idea behind this book is as high concept as a thriller can get: Christine wakes up every day in the bed of a stranger, but it’s always the same stranger, her husband Ben, who has to remind her afresh each day who she is, and how her memory has become so damaged that whenever […]
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
Set in a dystopian near-future, SSTSL is less a love story than the tale of the misguided coupling of a middle-aged Jewish neurotic with a gorgeous Korean girl with serious Daddy issues. As one of his friends puts it: ‘it’s time to stop dating all these Asian and white trash girls with serious problems.’ The […]
A Horse Walks Into A Bar by David Grossman
I bought this from our local Oxfam second-hand bookshop in Chipping Norton, which I seldom leave without a purchase as they display the books so beautifully and which has that lovely musty ‘old book’ smell. With its arresting cover and great title, I was drawn to the concept of a washed-up comedian, Dov Greenstein, who […]