No 362 The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith
Conman Chester MacFarland is enjoying a European vacation with his much younger beautiful wife, Colette, when his financial scams in the States catch up with him in Greece. When a Greek police officer – on behalf of the US authorities – approaches him in his Athens hotel with some awkward questions about his identity, Chester…
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No 373 The Hours by Michael Cunningham, Book 2 of #20booksofsummer22
The Hours was the original working title which Virginia Woolf used for Mrs Dalloway and in this beautifully affecting novel, Michael Cunningham uses this as a springboard to explore a day in the lives of three very different women, all of whom are linked in some way to that book. In 1923, Virginia Woolf is…
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No 374 Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower: Book 1 of #20booksofsummer22
Wells Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is one of the best collections of short stories that I have read in a long time. His unsentimental, often brutal yet always brilliant stories lay bare the lives of ordinary people, all trying to do the right thing is a world of alienation and hopelessness. Written with a…
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The Pull of the Past – Three books on memory from Maxwell, Capote and McClenahan
No 379 The Night of the Gun by David Carr
Before his untimely death in 2015, David Carr was an acclaimed journalist, editor and culture correspondent for the New York Times. Ta-Nehisi Coates claimed that he owed his writing career to Carr’s support and Carr is often credited as the man who launched Lena Dunham thanks to his championing of the original script of Girls.…
No 380 Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis for the #1954Club
I’m squeezing in one more review for the 1954 Club this week, with a book that has been languishing on my TBR shelves for more years than I care to remember! Regarded as one of the finest comic novels of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim caused quite a scandal when first published in 1954. The…
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No 381 Messiah by Gore Vidal for the #1954 Club
This week I am taking part in the 1954 Club, hosted by Kaggsy and Simon. The idea is simple – just read a book from the year in question and review it! I can’t always take part in the bi-annual Club events, but was delighted this time round to find a book in the 746…
No 384 The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark
My last encounter with Muriel Spark was not a successful one and I wasn’t fussed on Aiding and Abetting, her novel about the elusive Lord Lucan. The Ballad of Peckham Rye worked much better for me and I loved this folkloric fantasy about the mysterious Dougal Douglas who pops up to wreak havoc on the…
No 386 Roseanna by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö, translated by Lois Roth
The series of ten ‘Martin Beck’ police procedurals, which were written in the ‘60s and ‘70s by the Swedish couple Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are considered classics of the genre, influencing a generation of crime writers across the world. Of their work, Henning Mankell said; They realized that there was a huge, unexplored territory…
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