First published 2017. Picador paperback, 2018, pp 280, c.65,000 words. Kay was a ‘junior’ doctor who quit after six years of training and six years working in a public hospital in England. He is now a comedian and writes scripts for television and film. In this book, he brings his skills from the latter to […]
This is Going to Hurt — Adam Kay Read More »
First published 2022. Bench Press paperback, 2022, pp 200, c.70,000 words. There is a nice set up here: two families are being brought together as two single-parents bond. Su is a divorcee with a teenage daughter, Jeremy a widower with two sons, one a teenager, the other a child. Neither has a house large enough
Sound of It, The — Alison Jean Lester Read More »
First published 1880. Macmillan paperback, 1974, pp 365 (pp 306, main text), c.120,000 words (main text). Hardy is an anti-Dickens in that he is unsentimental. The good don’t naturally prevail, humans make poor choices. On the other hand Hardy is, like Dickens, a Victorian in his attitudes. Society’s social structure is all pervading. People generally
Trumpet Major, The — Thomas Hardy Read More »
First published 1988. John Murray paperback, 2018, pp 351. I studied mathematics up to the age of eighteen, covering the fundamentals of calculus. That was a long time ago, and I have rarely used it since. Working through this book reacquainted me with the subject, and it covers the same ground as my school lessons.
Calculus, A Complete Introduction — Paul Abbot and Hugh Neill Read More »
First published 1989. Legend paperback, 1989, pp 218, c.60,000 words. This is a science fiction book set in the past. It is structured as three interleaving story strands, one of which concerns a group of archaeologists who are digging in some strange burial mounds in Louisiana in 1929, the second is the story of a
Them Bones — Howard Waldrop Read More »
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino First published 1980. Vintage paperback, 1998, translated by William Weaver, pp 260, c.80,000 words. This is an experimental work. Although couched as fiction, it is more a thought experiment on the relationship between writer, reader and text. There are ten incomplete short stories, unrelated in
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller — Italo Calvino Read More »
First published 2023. Embla paperback, 2023, pp 309, c.105,000 words. As a male I’m unlikely to be the target market for books like this, but that doesn’t stop me enjoying a well-told tale. Here is a straight-forward romance set aboard a luxury motor-yacht chartered for a week’s cruising in the western Mediterranean. This setting is
Summer on the Riviera, A — Rachael Barnett Read More »
First published 2016. Penguin, paperback, 2017, pp 424, c.120,000 words. This is a comprehensive review of the rock music scene in 1971. It includes an incredible mass of trivia, bizarre facts and amusing anecdotes. Who but an obsessive would have read the sleeve notes to Neil Young’s Harvest and observed that Linda Ronstadt and James
1971 Never a Dull Moment — David Hepworth Read More »
First published 2021. Faber paperback, 2022, pp 340, c.90,000 words. Ishiguro’s familiar compass, buttoned up and drained of soul, is well suited to the near-future world he creates here. The protagonist, Klara, is programmed to selflessness, as it can also be said of Stevens in The Remains of the Day, Kathy in Never Let Me
Klara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro Read More »
First published 1955. Pan paperback, 1977, pp 253, c.92,000 words. The title of this book suggests that its subject is a tragedy, and so it is. Alan Duncan returns from Britain to his family farm in Australia to discover that the night before his arrival the parlourmaid apparently took her own life, and no one
Requiem for a Wren — Nevil Shute Read More »