Flavia de Luce is a startlingly bright new star in the firmament of classic crime. Eleven years old, a precocious scientist, extraordinarily well read, and wise beyond her years, she unravels a bizarre and deadly intrigue that threatens her eccentric and at times poisonous family. By turns fascinating, funny, cruel and downright scary, Bradley is [...]
Category Archives: Reviews
The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis
Monday 1st March 2010 – 2:50 am
“Sexual intercourse began in 1963″ Philip Larkin famously lamented. For Amis and The Pregnant Widow however, the crucial year is 1970. With characteristic verve and verbal dexterity Amis registers the effects of a sea-change in sexual mores on a small group of undergraduates as they read, drink, and bed-swap their way through the summer of [...]
Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada
Monday 1st March 2010 – 2:46 am
Written in Germany in 1947, Hans Fallada’s novel Alone in Berlin has finally been translated into English. The novel is set in Germany during World War Two and tells the tale of a couple who lose their son and as a result attempt to undermine Hitler’s regime by dropping anti-Nazi postcards across Berlin. The case [...]
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
Monday 1st March 2010 – 2:40 am
A grandmother and her six-year-old grandaughter spend the summer together on an island in the Gulf of Finland. Sophia’s mother has died and her father has work to do, so the two of them have plenty of time on their hands. They build animal sculptures and boats from bark, pick berries, swim and clear up [...]
Gold by Dan Rhodes
Monday 1st March 2010 – 2:35 am
Despite his previously announced retirement from writing, Dan Rhodes has returned with a new novel. It is set in an unnamed seaside town where Miyuki, a half-Japanese lesbian, is spending her annual holiday doing what she enjoys most: walking and drinking. In the pub, she plays as an extra on a quiz team, gets into [...]
The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov
Monday 1st March 2010 – 2:30 am
Nabokov revealed little about The Original of Laura during its composition apart from a string of enigmatic comparisons to Lolita. On his death-bed he demanded that his wife Vera destroy the unfinished manuscript. Vera (who had prevented Nabokov from destroying his Lolita manuscript two decades earlier) instead placed the 138 index cards in the vault [...]
A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Monday 1st March 2010 – 2:18 am
Set in December 1963, as Kenya prepares for independence, this book investigates the preceding emergency years of 1952-1960 and Britain’s brutal suppresion of the violent Mau Mau rebellion. This groundbreaking novel presents differing notions of salvation: some believe they will find it through love, some through religion and others through the political goal of a [...]