This is a beautifully written novel filled with pathos and written with immaculate prose that describes accurately not only Japan and not only the Japanese character but also the post-WW2 Japanese…
From the very first classic opening line through to the end, this is a page-turner. Plath wrote this very quickly and it shows in the effervescence of the prose. However,…
This was an interesting novel to pick up a few days after finishing Cat and Mouse by Günter Grass. There are a lot of parallels in the prose of Grass and…
I’ve read a fair few books from South Africa that deal (unsurprisingly) with the issue of relationships between the black and white communities. Nadine Gordimer’s novel is, sadly, not the…
This is Philip Roth in his element, cruising along drawing on contemporary themes in public and political USAnian life and distilling them through the lens of a single individual who,…
I know, I know, I should have read The Tin Drum before this as that’s the first of the trilogy and this is the second book. But, charity store book beggars…
No, no, no, no…. NO! This is absolutely NOT the kind of novel we should be seeing on the 1001 list. Absolutely not. This is not a novel anyone needs…
The only reason that this got a “good” rating from me and not “okay” was the legacy of the novel in terms of its depiction of country life at the…
What at first seems like a fairly straightforward novel about a guy dealing with the loss of his leg takes a quite unexpected turn when a character turns up to…
Nope. This didn’t quite do it for me. Don’t get me wrong, Durrell can write beautiful prose, and I honestly thought that this would completely entrance me and that the…
My first Trollope and what a one to start with! An exquisitely constructed Victorian world inhabited by vivid characters and a strong plot to carry them along with. Trollope contrives a…
This was a strange one. I had no idea about any of the background to the novel at all, not even the play it’s based on, John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera….
What a great read this was. I can also imagine that Murdoch had immense fun writing it too, because that comes across in the writing for too often to be coincidental….
Dear Lord, spare me. Another title from Latin/South America and yet another novel that I could have done without. What the heck is it with that continent that I just…
Dangling man? Dangling reader more like! Another Bellow under the belt and that’s a good metaphor as yet another protagonist spends most of the novel navel-gazing. Bellow won the Nobel,…
Another bookshelf breaker under the belt. Now, I’m a real Les Mis fan having seen the musical in London four times, but this did not actually meet my expectations in…
There’s a lot to glean from this tale of injustice because the issues that the story raises are just as relevant today as they were when this was written over…
Leaving aside any controversy about whether McEwan borrowed the plot for this novel from another source, for an author’s first effort, this isn’t half bad at all. Macabre, disturbing and…