Hernan Diaz: Trust

Sea of Tranqility : Emily St John Mandel

In Sea of Tranquillity Emily St John Mandel returns to old themes; pandemics, as in Station Eleven, and Ponzi schemes, as in The Glass Hotel. But here we also have shifts in time from 1912 to 2401 during which a main character appears in various guises.

Artistic inspiration

Why Blog?

The Gerts have been blogging for eight years now and writing together for about fifteen years. We started our blog in 2014 when Crane Mansions, our first book, was coming out on Kindle. We have kept it going, mainly through the persistence of Poet Gert, who has had to tell me, Music Gert, to pull my finger out at times. But we both put in a bit of work, and every time I read I have the thought of the Blog hovering at my shoulder, ‘Shall I write about this?’ ‘Can I really say what I think about this ghastly book,’ ‘ Am I the only person in the world who has read this book?’ and so on.

Dame Stella Rimington: sense and sensibility

Treacle Walker : Alan Garner

The Guardian describes Alan Garner’s Treacle Walker as ‘the book of a lifetime.’ Having just read it as a newcomer to Alan Garner’s work and finding it quite hard to understand, I could also take that to mean the book can be seen both as a summation of Alan Garner’s work, and of his own life.

Seicho Matsumoto: A Quiet Place

Martha in Paris. Martha, Eric, and George : Margery Sharp

 

It’s Saturday night and Martha is wallowing in the bath, one of the few sensual experiences she enjoys (apart from eating) when her patron, Mr Joyce, drops the bombshell to her long- suffering aunt and her husband Harry.

Booker Prize 2022

The long list for the Booker Prize (formerly known as the Booker Prize for fiction (1969-2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002-2019) was  announced recently. This is a prize worth winning, not just for the £50,000 in cash, but for the publicity and huge boost in sales for the winning author and their publishers.