Review: A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara

All the most terrifying ifs involve people. All the good ones do as well

Review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman

In the end, what matters is this: I survived

Review: Fever Dream, by Samanta Schweblin

Strange can be quite normal

Review: A Horse Walks Into A Bar, by David Grossman

Synopsis: The setting is a comedy club in a small Israeli town. An audience that has come expecting an evening of amusement instead sees a comedian coming apart on stage, an act of disintegration, a man crumbling, as a matter of choice, before their eyes. They could get up and leave, or boo and whistle …

Reading Lolita in Tehran – by Azar Nafisi

“Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies.”

Review: Trumpet, by Jackie Kay

Synopsis: The death of legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody exposes an extraordinary secret, one that enrages his adopted son, Colman, leading him to collude with a tabloid journalist. Besieged by the press, his widow Millie flees to a remote Scottish village, where she seeks solace in memories of their marriage. The reminiscences of those who …

Review: Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson

Synopsis: What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath. During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to …

Review: If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Synopsis: On a street in a town in the North of England, ordinary people are going through the motions of their everyday existence. A young man is in love with a neighbour who does not even know his name. An old couple make their way up to the nearby bus stop. But then a terrible …

Review: All the Light We cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

Synopsis: Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When …

Review: Wild Swans – The Daughters of China, by Jung Chang

Synopsis: Through the story of three generations of women - grandmother, mother and daughter - Wild Swans tells nothing less than the whole tumultuous history of China's tragic twentieth century, from sword-bearing warlords to Chairman Mao, from the Manchu Empire to the Cultural Revolution. At times terrifying, at times astonishing, always deeply moving, Wild Swans …

Review: To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

Synopsis: 'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.' A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of …

Review: Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell

Synopsis: Oblivious to the bizarre ways in which their lives intersect, nine characters-a terrorist in Okinawa, a record-shop clerk in Tokyo, a money-laundering British financier in Hong Kong, an old woman running a tea shack in China, a transmigrating "noncorpum" entity seeking a human host in Mongolia, a gallery-attendant-cum-art-thief in Petersburg, a drummer in London, …

Spring Round Up

I have a serious amount of reviews to catch up on and, if you know me at all, you’d know that I’d rather be reading (my current book is sat by me, whispering ‘read me’ ever so softly in my ear!). So, here’s a quick spring round up to get up to date. Big Brother, …

Review: Stoner – by John Williams

Synopsis: William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet, and after his death his colleagues remember him rarely. Title: Stoner …

Review: White Teeth – by Zadie Smith

Synopsis: The story travels through Jamaica, Turkey, Bangladesh and India but ends up in a scrubby North London borough, home of the book's two unlikely heroes: prevaricating Archie Jones and intemperate Samad Iqbal. They met in the Second World War, as part of a "Buggered Battalion" and have been best friends ever since. Archie marries …

Review: The Ask and the Answer – by Patrick Ness

Synopsis: Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd has carried a desperately wounded Viola right into the hands of their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss. Immediately separated from Viola and imprisoned, Todd is forced to learn the ways of the Mayor's new order. But what secrets are hiding just outside of town? And where is Viola? Is …

Review: The Knife of Never Letting Go – by Patrick Ness

Synopsis: Imagine you're the only boy in a town of men. And you can hear everything they think. And they can hear everything you think. Imagine you don't fit in with their plans... Todd Hewitt is just one month away from the birthday that will make him a man. But his town has been keeping …

Review: The Fault in Our Stars – by John Green

Synopsis: "I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once." Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support …

Review: The Color Purple – by Alice Walker

Synopsis: Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to “Mister,” a brutal man …

Review: The Shock of the Fall – by Nathan Filer

Synopsis: I’ll tell you what happened because it will be a good way to introduce my brother. His name’s Simon. I think you’re going to like him. I really do. But in a couple of pages he’ll be dead. And he was never the same after that.         Title: The Shock of …