Inimitable, Jim Crace (http://www.jim-crace.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crace) stands on his own ground among living English novelists. Immune to trends, guided by his own singular star, he has sown and grown an 11-volume shelf of finely crafted, intensely atmospheric books. Each novel fashions a unique climate, landscape and mood, a far cry from everyday realism though nothing to […]
Harvest by Jim Crace Read More »
The Highland Clearances, occurring roughly between 1792 and the 1850s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances), was one of the cruellest episodes in Scotland’s history. In Consider the Lilies (1968) Iain Crichton Smith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Crichton_Smith) captures its impact through the thoughts and memories of old Mrs Scott who has lived all her life within the narrow confines of her community. Alone and bewildered by the demands
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Exiled to Jamaica after the Battle of Culloden in 1746, Sir John Wedderburn made a fortune, alongside his three brothers, as a faux surgeon and sugar planter. In the 1770s, he returned to Scotland to marry and re-establish the family name. He brought with him Joseph Knight, a black slave and a token of his
Joseph Knight by James Robertson Read More »
Born in New England Charles Palliser is an American citizen but has lived in the United Kingdom since the age of three. He went up to Oxford in 1967 to read English Language and Literature and took a First in June 1970. He was awarded the BLitt in 1975 for a dissertation on Modernist fiction. From 1974
Rustication by Charles Palliser Read More »
A man-made plague has swept the earth, but a small group survives, along with the green-eyed Crakers – a gentle species bio-engineered to replace humans. Toby, onetime member of the Gods Gardeners and expert in mushrooms and bees, is still in love with street-smart Zeb, who has an interesting past. The Crakers’ reluctant prophet, Snowman-the-Jimmy,
MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood Read More »
A beautifully written study in melancholy set in a Swiss hotel by a lake. Edith Hope has gone to regain her composure on the advice of friends after an affair. Full of sly humour and rendered in delicate prose, this is a gently entertaining read for which Brookner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Brookner) won the Booker Prize of 1984. Anita
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner Read More »
In the dying days of the Ottoman Empire in 1908 Basil Pascali is a spy who reports regularly to Istanbul on the activities of the local people on his Aegean island. His reports are never acknowledged or seemingly acted upon, although his regular payment continues to come through. He expects to be found out at any
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Packed with detail and displaying an evident love of the subject Melvyn Bragg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvyn_Bragg) gives us the story of the Christianization of the North of England in the seventh century. The book shines a fictional light onto the warring, pagan Dark Ages. An outstanding blend of passion and erudition. Melvyn Bragg 800 pages in Sceptre
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‘Ad majorem Dei Gloriam’ – ‘To the greater glory of God’ is the motto of the Society of Jesus. It can also be understood as the aim of constructing all the buildings and creative works of art which are really hymns in stone, word and music to the divine. Golding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) gives us Dean Jocelin who determines
The Spire by William Golding Read More »
