Lee Child (http://www.leechild.com/) sells crime thriller novels on a shipping container scale. His legion of devoted readers mark their diaries with the expected date of character Jack Reacher’s next outing. Library shelves are empty at the places where his fiction is stored, and reservation lists long. There is clearly a market for Child’s hard boiled […]
Perhaps you’re aching for a seductively readable, lusciously page-turning, utterly compelling and hugely rewarding read? Fantastic fiction is, after all, an escape to another place or time than your own. Look no further than Penny Vincenzi (http://pennyvincenzi.com/). Since her first novel, Old Sins, was published in 1989, Penny has written fourteen scorching masterpieces, most recently
A Question of Trust Read More »
When someone you really admire gushes about an author and their work, one is inclined to take notice. When that person offers an articulate critical appraisal from memory about a piece of fiction from 2004 – well, I had to set the weekend aside for it. That novel was Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Marilynne Summers
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A worthy winner of the ‘Booker of Bookers’, Midnight’s Children (1981) is a fantastic achievement in fiction by British Indian Salman Rushdie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie and http://www.salman-rushdie.com/ and http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/04/18/specials/rushdie.html), this is already deemed a classic. It is a sophisticated blend of magical realism and historical fiction setting before us the (un)reality of post-colonial India. The tale is delivered in gloriously witty and
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On first reading this at school in 1977, it took me a while to get fully involved in the narrative. By half way through I wondered if there could ever be a more subtle and penetrating novelist than Mary Ann Evans. 40 years later I’ve not read any fiction finer than that of George Eliot
Middlemarch by George Eliot Read More »
Debates about whether the digital world is shortening attention spans rumble on. School teachers now report that pupils can’t concentrate for long, and the likely cause is the constant distraction of digital gadgets and social media. University teachers report that year one is remedial work, an exercise in basic education. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3342827/Half-of-all-universities-have-to-teach-remedial-maths-and-English.html) No doubt there is
Essayism by Brian Dillon Read More »
Annie Murray has been infantalising the minds of her readers with carelessly crafted novels of no power and less conviction since 1995. Her 25th scribbling, A Wartime Secret, is available now and her devoted readership can expect many a pot boiler to follow. Murray prepared for a literary career by training as a journalist and working
In the last few years the genre of psychological mystery thriller has become highly popular. With ample leisure time on your hands now at this peak holiday period, why not indulge in some heart starter fiction? Lisa Jewell (http://www.lisa-jewell.co.uk/) offers us ‘Then She Was Gone’. The summary is as follows. Ellie was fifteen, her mother’s
Robert M. Sapolsky (https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/robert-sapolsky, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky) is a distinguished primatologist working broadly in the life and social sciences to examine human behaviour, manifestations of which, he writes, belong to the nervous system and to sensory stimuli. Some of human behaviour is purely mechanical, with payoffs in dopamine, that ‘invidious, rapidly habituating reward.’ Other aspects are located
