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Continue reading →: Here We Are by Graham Swift
This is a diversion of the best sort, a really great bit of story-telling. At the heart of the novel are a trio of colourful characters; a magician called Ronnie Deane, stage name Pablo, after a parrot he had as a childhood pet, his partner and assistant Evie, and their…
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Continue reading →: Moonstone – the boy who never was by Sjón
Translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb. This is a couple of hours wonderfully spent.Reykjavík in October of 1918 has its problems; the long winter is approaching, a nearby volcano has erupted, and the Spanish Flu arrives on an incoming ship. Sixteen year old Máni Steinn spends many hours at the…
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Continue reading →: Enter The Aardvark by Jessica Anthony
Split between contemporary Washington and Victorian England, this is a whole lot of fun, and as cross genres go, it covers many, contemporary, historical, ghost, horror and even some political satire.In Washington Alexander Paine Wilson is a young Republican Congressman who is easily wound-up. One hot summer day, as he…
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Continue reading →: Kettle Crag from Bampton Village
This is a superb circuit from the village, especillay now the ground has dried out. It begins by following the River Lowther, now laden with salmon, watched closely by kingfisher, with the beaver working hard downstream. At the hamlet of Butterwick the route climbs to the moor. From this viewpoint…
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Continue reading →: The Dead Girls by Jorge Ibargüengoitia
Translated by Asa Zatz. Published in Mexico for the first time in 1983, and based on real events, this is the story of serial-killing brothel owners Delfina and María de Jésus González, whose crimes were uncovered in 1964. Though the novel’s opening smacks of a typical crime thriller, a violent…
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Continue reading →: Our backyard at its best…
I can’t recommend this route highly enough. After pretty much non-stop rain since the new year it dried up here in the Lakes last week. 5 days and its much more manageable on foot – and the streams, rivers and lakes are still lively. You could cheat on this route…
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Continue reading →: The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson
Larson weaves together the triumphal story of the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 with the gruesome tale of one of America’s first serial killers to create a unique reading experience, the two strands, the White City and pleasure it brought to millions, and the Dark City, with Holmes (the…
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Continue reading →: Deacon King Kong by James McBride
There is a significant dose of comedy in <i>McBride’s </i> new novel, more of the slapstick, in you face, style, rather than it being dry or subtle. Its the aspect that works least well. The humour mainly derives from the small congregation of Five Ends Baptist Church, which operates out…
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Continue reading →: Who Was Changed And Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
First published in 1954 (my version a reissue from the Dorothy project in 2010), Comyns’s short novel is a memorable one, forcing itself into parts of the mind rarely exercised.Set in a rural village in what I guess might be the 1930s, she introduces her cast of characters in the…
To live more widely
supera superiora sequi
SafeReturnDoubtful is my alias. Rua is my fox red labrador pup, born 14 Feb 2026 and learning fast..
Where is Rua?
I was so much older then…
Quote of the Week
Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, ‘What road do I take?’ The cat asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it really doesn’t matter, does it?’
Lewis Carroll
Safe Return Doubtful 