Book Review - Utopia Avenue - David Mitchell
Four people come together 1960’s London to form a band in this exuberant and enjoyable novel about friendship, love and music, during a tumultuous period of social history. Lots of great cameos as well.
Book Review - The Saints of Swallow Hill - Donna Everhart
Strong work of historical fiction, following Rae Lynn and Del Reese in the turpentine camps of North Carolina, during the Great Depression. With both strong characters and a sense of place and time, could this be this years ‘Crawdads’?
Book Review - Boys Don’t Cry - Fíona Scarlett
Gritty and emotional tale of two brothers living in flats complex in Dublin. After Finn falls ill, gifted student Joe finds his world falling apart.
Book Review - The Art of Living - Thich Nhat Hanh
Practical and comforting book based on a series of talks by renowned Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, on how to bring mindfulness into our daily lives. Compassionate and wise, a self help book to return to.
Book Review - Let Me Be Frank With You - Richard Ford
Four Stories make up this fourth instalment of Frank Bascombe, finding him dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and old age in his inimical funny, moving and wise way. Written in Ford’s trademark style, luminous and pitch perfect, he’s one of the America’s finest novelists.
Book Review - Pachinko - Min Jin Lee
A review of ‘Pachinko’ by Min Jin Lee, a multi generational epic, that begins in a small Korean fishing village and ends in Tokyo in the 1980’s. Now on Apple TV, a sumptuous Kdrama epic.
Book Review - The Raptures - Jan Carson
Jan Carson’s book is about a mysterious illness affecting a group of school children in the North of Ireland in the nineties. Sometimes dark, sometimes hilarious, it’s an incredibly readable book that looks at belief, family, community and trauma.
Book Review - Windswept and Interesting - Billy Connolly
Billy Connolly recalls his own life in this audiobook, interspersed with some of his best jokes, stories, and even a bit of singing. Warm, hilarious and revealing, the big yin is perfect company.
Book Review - The Dark Hours - Michael Connelly
A welcome return for Ballard and Bosch in this twisty, well plotted thriller from Connelly, now twenty three books into this brilliant series, that takes place in a challenging environment of police mistrust and protests.
Book Review -Thin Places - Kerri Ní Dochartaigh
Kerri Ni Dochartaigh's memoir is a mix of of nature, memoir and social history about the North Of Ireland during the troubles and subsequent years. Raw, lyrical and unflinching.
Book Review - Rules of Civility - Amor Towles
This book is set in a wonderfully recreated and detailed New York, 1938, with intriguing, believable but flawed characters featuring in a story beautifully written. At times funny, elegant and poignant.
Book Review - Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart
It seems that everyone has read Shuggie Bain by now so I thought it was about time I posted my review on an incredibly immersive novel that is gritty and depressing, but also about survival and love.
Book review - Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape - Manchán Magan
Manchán Magan’s fascinating book sets out to explore the Irish language and it’s roots in nature, people and animals, as well as cosmology and other ancient civilisations.
Book Review -Prisoners of Geography - Tim Marshall
Tim Marshall’s ‘Prisoners of Geography’ is an engaging introduction to the world of geopolitics and explains a lot of the ambitions of global powers and how they are curbed by natural barriers.
Book Review - Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro
Ishiguro’s dystopian novel about a Artificial Friend called Klara is beautifully written, as you’d expect, but is it up there with previous books by the Nobel Prize winning author?
Book Review - Hidden Valley Road - Inside the mind of an American Family-Robert Kolker
The harrowing and enthralling story of the Galvins, a family of twelve children brought up in Colorado, six of whom went on to develop schizophrenia. This is their story, about how it affected their family and the contribution they made to sciences understanding of the disease.
Book review - Winterkill - Ragnar Jónasson
Ragnar Jónasson’s final book in the Dark Iceland series finds Ari Thor investigating the death of a nineteen year old student - was her death murder or suicide? Another entertaining, claustrophobic tightly plotted thriller that takes place in the middle of a blizzard.
Book Review - No One is Talking About This - Patricia Lockwood
Patricia Lockwoods book bristles with energy, and is both sharp and funny. What starts off as somewhat ironic take on the online lives we lead gives way to a story that is genuinely moving, with wonderfully lyrical prose. Haven’t read anything like this all year.
Book Review - Leonard and Hungry Paul - Rónán Hession
Rónán Hessions debut novel is a warm hearted read about two thirty something friends relatively happy in their own skins, getting on with their lives. But with a love interest, an upcoming wedding and an unexpected windfall, things begin to change……
Book Review - To Paradise - Hanya Yanagihara
Hanya Yanagihara’s latest spans two hundred years and 720 pages. It’s large in scope and at times unwieldy and this is my attempt to review it. Is it any good? As long as it is, best not to read if you are entering isolation……….
