Book Reviews

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...