There was an excitable buzz last night at the launch of Daisy Dunn’s debut books: Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet and The Poems of Catullus, at Peter Harrington Rare Books in Dover Street, Mayfair.
Among the 200+ guests pounding the shop’s floor were Ian and Victoria Hislop, Sir Simon Jenkins, Hannah Kaye, Mike Grady, Hugo Williams, Giles Milton, Suzannah Lipscomb, Michael Cockerell, Gordon Corera, Thane Prince…
A straightforward synopsis of Nobody is Ever Missing would read like this: a woman leaves her job and husband (and entire life) in Manhattan and buys a one-way ticket to New Zealand to go hitchhiking, without telling anyone.
Sounds a little bit like Gone Girl, doesn’t it?
Christmas stockings should be full of books (although normal stockings should be similarly so). Here are some suggestions:
Need something enthralling to read on the beach / plane / park / stay-cation? Here are my favourite books for the Summer: gripping storylines filled with balmy sunshine that are suitably lightweight for July and August.
Etta has never seen the sea. So early one morning the 82 year old leaves her husband, Otto, and their farm in Canada with a note explaining that she is walking 2000 miles to the water and that she will try to remember to come back.
I love short stories unutterably but reviewing them can be a challenge.
Books make the most thoughtful presents. Here are some of my favourites I’ve read this year, either before I started this blog, or books I couldn’t squeeze into the running ‘Book of the Month’ feature.
Sarah Waters is a brilliant story teller. We’re in Camberwell in 1922 for her latest novel The Paying Guests. Our protagonist is Frances Wray, a spinster in her mid-twenties who lives with her mother in their large house. They have divided it up to rent out some of the rooms to a young married couple, Mr and Mrs Barber, to help pay for the running of the property. So far, so straightforward.
You will have heard of Letters of Note. It has been an online sensation that has divulged the secret thoughts of significant figures in history by publishing their clandestine letters. A collection of otherwise undisclosed feelings and ideas between fascinating characters and interesting people. Now there’s a book, a beautiful, illustrated, hardback book.
Any review of the Dept. of Speculation is going to fall spectacularly short of successfully conveying what the book is about, simply because the pleasure of the story lies in the poetry of Jenny Offill’s words. A couple get married and have a baby in Brooklyn, New York. They manage the inanities of everyday life but relationships become complicated. We read it through the thoughts of the narrator / heroine, who always “thinks of saying” and whose forces are internalised.