Book posts
These are my book notes. They’re not really reviews, more thoughts a day or two after finishing a book before I launch into the next one. Like film posts, the practice of writing something quickly seals the experience more firmly into my brain.
December 30 2025, 16:54
Books of Blood, Vol IV
I’ve owned these stories in compendium form since I was a teenager in the late eighties, but only read a handful then, and I haven’t read any of them since. My memory is that, compared with Stephen King, and even James Herbert... [more...]
December 14 2025, 10:59
Lucio’s Confession
I bought this while visiting 'the oldest bookshop in the world', Livraria Bertrand in the Chiado district of Lisbon, at which the staff stamp the inside cover in a cute proof that it was bought there. [more...]
November 30 2025, 15:12
Cursed Bunny
There’s a transition that happens if you read the stories in order. It starts with what feels like horrific folk tales, where women are fighting their bodies, families and the cultural norms of South Korea. [more...]
October 21 2025, 17:42
Moderation
The blurb and jacket description (and opening third, tbf) make you think it’s a techno thriller, but it pivots around the halfway point into clear literary romance territory, which I wasn’t expecting. [more...]
October 06 2025, 20:35
The Men
On a camping trip in the North Californian mountains with her husband and son, Jane Pearson experiences 'an intense nothing' and is suddenly alone. Across the world, all males have simultaneously disappeared—men, children and babies. [more...]
September 22 2025, 20:24
Universality
The novel is in four acts, each from different points of view. It opens with a long magazine article about a young man, Jake, who had disappeared after using a solid gold bar to knock out a squatter on a deserted Yorkshire farm. [more...]
September 13 2025, 14:46
A Spy in the House of Love
Sabina is in a long-term relationship with Alan, a father figure, while having affairs with other men. She is an actress and, when she disappears for days and weeks at a time, she tells Alan it is to perform in plays across the country... [more...]
September 06 2025, 13:46
we had to remove this post
Kayleigh has received several emails from Mr Stitic, a lawyer at a firm bringing a civil action against Hexa, the company Kayleigh used to work for. She was in a team that moderated social media posts, taking them off the site if they broke the rules. [more...]
August 30 2025, 11:25
The Sleepwalkers
A newly married couple, Evelyn and Richard, are gifted a honeymoon by the groom’s mother at Villa Rosa, an exclusive hotel on a Greek island. We know this because Evelyn tells us in a letter she has written to Richard, which takes up the first third of the novel. [more...]
August 18 2025, 20:11
Fever Dream
An even shorter book than Fatale, Fever Dream is a conversation between Amanda, a mother on holiday in a rural part of Argentina with her young daughter, Nina, and David, troubled son of their neighbour, Carla. In the opening, they talk about worms in the body... [more...]
August 11 2025, 20:12
Fatale
My copy of Fatale has a foreword by David Peace that includes extended quotes from Manchette’s essays and letters expressing frustrations at the reactions of both publishers and critics to the novel, which was a departure for him, and expounding on his communist politics. [more...]
August 04 2025, 19:48
Players
I disliked this book at first. Two voices, Lyle and Pammy, intertwine in the opening chapters, where he is a trader on Wall Street and she works in marketing for a grief counselling service run from the World Trade Center. They’ve become friends with Ethan, an older man Pammy works with, and his much younger partner, Jake. [more...]
July 25 2025, 13:49
Picnic at Hanging Rock (novel)
My daughter bought this for me for my birthday in March, and I wanted to watch the Peter Weir film for #ArthouseSummer2025, so it seemed right to read it before the film images infected my imagination. [more...]
July 23 2025, 14:23
The Fog
This is one of those formative books for me. I mean, look at the cover! The one I have now is on the left, but the hastily Photoshopped one on the right is the edition I owned in my teens. [more...]
June 17 2025, 21:49
Satin Island
I bought this in Barter Books, Alnick, because of the beautiful cover, unusual size, and the blurb proclaiming it was shortlisted for the Booker in 2015. The cover has a colour wheel of some kind with a coating of oil on one side. [more...]
June 07 2025, 11:58
Gabriel’s Moon
I was looking for something literary and genre, and I remember loving Any Human Heart many years ago. I know Boyd has written several spy novels, but I didn’t finish the last of his I tried (a whodunnit about Freud and Vienna), Waiting for Sunrise. [more...]
May 21 2025, 19:35
Good Morning, Midnight
Reading the afterword by A.L. Kennedy, this is the fourth novel in a row where Rhys was working with a similar character, as if trying to find the ideal version of her: intelligent, lonely, processing personal tragedy, and struggling with alcohol. [more...]
May 14 2025, 09:00
Ghost Wall
This was a tough read. The prose is lyrical, often beautiful, but the physical abuse Sylvie suffers was hard to stomach . It opens with the sacrifice of a young woman at some time in the past by the community she grew up in. [more...]
May 11 2025, 12:26
Businessmen as Lovers
Mimi and Caroline, second cousins and close friends, travel by train from England to Italy for a summer holiday at the house of Mimi’s Aunt Evie. Mimi is grieving her mother’s death, but she’s also newly in love with a Reuters journalist she affectionately calls Beetle. [more...]
May 03 2025, 20:34
Audition
The nameless narrator is an actress married to Tomas, a writer, and they don’t have children, but in the opening she meets at a restaurant a young man, Xaviar, who is convinced she is his mother. [more...]
April 30 2025, 14:59
Did not finish
Instead of posting negative reviews on books I don’t like, I’ve decided to take a few notes about what didn’t work for me, put the book down and move on to the next one. [more...]
April 05 2025, 21:52
A Visit From the Goon Squad
I wanted a novel, and this pushes the boundaries of what a novel can be, interweaving short stories over multiple decades with connected characters. It’s a work of genius, and occasionally maddening for that, because she represents some of these characters in irritating ways... [more...]