It’s been well over three years since The Mission House was published, perhaps an indication of the care and attention paid in writing Carys Davies’ latest brief, vivid novella. Clear is set ...
https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/03/clear-by-carys-davies-a-love-story/
The Lodgers is acclaimed poet Holly Pester’s first novel. I’m partial to novels by poets and the premise of this one sounded interesting: a woman returns to her hometown, subletting an apartm...
https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/02/the-lodgers-by-holly-pester-living-on-the-margins/
This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could. Those o...
https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/02/blasts-from-the-past-stasiland-by-anna-funder-2004/
I enjoyed Hiroko Oyamada’s Weasels in the Attic this time last year, ending my review saying that I was keen to explore more of her writing. Originally published in Japan in 2013, The Factory i...
I’ve long had a penchant for Irish writing but either that’s becoming more pronounced or there are even more fine writers being published from that country. Whichever it is, that was what dre...
https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2023/08/though-the-bodies-fall-by-noel-oregan-mothers-little-helper/
I was delighted to spot a new Jenny Erpenbeck on the horizon, putting up my hand as soon as I was offered a proof of Kairos. Erpenbeck’s books offer much food for thought on the events that hav...
I’d not read any Japanese fiction for quite some time when I spotted Hiroko Oyamada’s eye-catchingly titled Weasels in the Attic on NetGalley and liked the sound of it. Billed as a novel, it ...
It’s been a decade since A. M. Homes’ May We Be Forgiven was published so I was more than keen to read The Unfolding, particularly as the blurb suggested a state of the nation novel, although...
https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2022/09/the-unfolding-by-a-m-homes-what-comes-next/
The Night Interns is oncologist Austin Duffy’s third novel. It takes us back to his workplace, the setting for his debut, This Living and Immortal Thing, following three surgical interns, not l...
I’ve been a fan of Amy Bloom’s writing for many years. Both her short stories, collected together in Rowing to Eden, and her novels are marked by clarity, elegance and insight. It’s been ov...
It was its premise that attracted me to Sara Freeman’s Tides when it was pitched to me: a debut about a woman who flees after suffering a devastating bereavement drawn into a relationship with ...
https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2022/01/tides-by-sara-freeman-not-feeling-is-a-feeling-too/