Category Archives: Favourite Novels

Oh You Pretty Thing

VG Lee’s collection of short stories is a fantastic read. Beautifully written, eclectic in subject matter, they range from life in small town Idaho in the 19th century to two friends on a shopping trip to Bluewater. What is consistent throughout, however, is the subtle and engaging way each story is told. It’s evident that […]

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

Set mainly in Edinburgh, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell is told from the perspective of three women, the eponymous Esme Lennox, her sister Kitty and the granddaughter, Iris. It is masterful storytelling of the first order, as O’Farrell intertwines their stories as if they were pieces in an overarching jigsaw puzzle. […]

My Sister, The Serial Killer

Set in Nigeria, My Sister, The Serial Killer grabs you from the start with its intriguing premise of two sisters, Korede, the sensible, older sibling, constantly coming to the assistance of her younger and much more attractive sister, Ayoola who has a nasty habit of murdering her boyfriends. If that’s not bad enough, things become […]

In Praise of Book Clubs

As someone who tended to confine her reading to the greats from Austrian and German literature, interspersed with the obligatory English language classic novel, and preferably only reading works by authors who had been dead for a minimum of 50 years (with the exception of Jörg Mauthe and absolutely anything written by Wolf Haas), I […]

Highland Adventures – Jacobites in Literature

If like me you’re waiting to read the next book in the Outlander series until you’ve watched the next season on TV, here are some more Highland adventure stories to keep you going in the meantime. The Outlander series of books and the TV series which it has spawned have proven a massive international success, […]

Book Review: A Spool of Blue Thread – Anne Tyler

I read A Spool of Blue Thread at someone else’s suggestion. I had no idea what the book was about. Moreover, as an inveterate reader of German literature, I’d never heard of the author, Anne Tyler. I picked up the book, thinking to myself this is so not the type of book I would read. […]

Book Review: Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

Forget the Hollywood image of the monster with bolts in his neck, Frankenstein, written by the then 18 year old Mary Shelley, is an intriguing read as well as a morality tale, still as relevant for today, if not more so. Within Shelley’s tale of Victor Frankenstein who creates a being that turns into a […]

Novel Review: Brave New World

Brave New World depicts what the world will be like in the future. It’s 2540 or 632 A.F. i.e. After Ford and the novel depicts what happens to society when Americanisation/Globalisation has reached its zenith. Written in 1932, it’s chilling how prescient the author, Aldous Huxley, seems to be. Brave New World is a world […]

Novel Review: Great Expectations

If you’ve never read a Dicken’s novel then Great Expectations is an excellent introduction to his world. The novel is written with great wit highlighting Dicken’s hallmark skill of describing people and events with a wonderfully humorous turn of phrase. As with all Dicken’s novels there is a cornucopia of characters exhibiting a wide range […]

Novel Review: Animal Farm

In a nutshell Animal Farm is pure genius in its simplicity. As a former student of Russian, I have numerous books on Russian history books sitting on my numerous bookshelves collecting dust. But for a concise and pretty accurate account of what happened to Lenin’s revolution, then Animal Farm is a perfect choice. Orwell dissects […]

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