-
Continue reading →: The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler
translated from the German (Austria) by Katy Derbyshire – Published 2024 This was a really rewarding reading experience, a vibrant story of a working-class Viennese cafe and the eccentric characters that inhabit it. Robert Simon, an orphan with a tough childhood is in his early 30s in 1966, making a…
-
Continue reading →: Beartooth by Callan Wink
American Fiction – Published 2025 The author himself is a fishing guide on the Yellowstone river which partly explains how his descriptions of the seasons and the Montana mountain wilderness are so evocative, they are pretty much characters themselves and certainly play a large part in the enjoyment of the…
-
Continue reading →: The Boy From The Sea by Garrett Carr
Ireland – Published 2025 In Donegal, Ireland, 1973, a baby boy is found on the beach of a close-knit fishing village. A fisherman, Ambrose Bonnar, burly and bighearted, offers to adopt the child into his own family, his son, Declan, wife, Christine, and elderly father. The community remains fascinated by…
-
Continue reading →: RocamadourRocamadour’s situation, set into the cliffs of a gorge on a tributary of the Dordogne river, has attracted tourists and pilgrims since its beginnings in the twelfth century. Most come for its historical monuments and its Notre Dame Sanctuary, but there are of course plenty of bars, restaurants and souvenir…
-
Continue reading →: The Bells of GramondThe sleepy folk of Gramond are woken early on weekdays; whether they choose to be or not. The church bells are loud, but muted between 10 pm and 7 am. Then at 7 am they are back with a vengeance; seven strikes, repeated, followed by a cacophonic miscellany of chimes…
-
Continue reading →: The National Telepathy by Roque Larraquy
translated from the Spanish (Argentina) by Frank Wynne – Published 2024 The large part of this unconventional short novel is narrated firstly by the unnamed assistant to Amado Dam, a 1930s rubber magnate, then by the deeply unpleasant Amado himself. A Peruvian ship is delivering 19 undocumented indigenous Indians to…
-
Continue reading →: Mother Naked by Glen James Brown
English Literature – Historic Fiction – Published 2025 Teesside author Glen James Brown is one of our upcoming North of England writers, inevitably compared to Benjamin Myers with this novel and its links to Durham Cathedral. Modyr Nakett (Mother Naked in old English) was recorded as being a wandering minstrel…
-
Continue reading →: Through the Pyrenees and into the OccitanieThe village of Tella, high up in the Ordesa National Park in the Spanish Pyrenees (ar 1240 metres), has a number of historical sites to see, though the Bear Cave (as I found out only when I got to its locked gate) is closed in the winter. The Dolmen de…
-
Continue reading →: Ordesa and Monte Perdido National ParkThe Sierra de la Demanda was largely formed in the last ice age, with broad alpine peaks, green highland pastures, and expansive valleys cut by fierce rivers, not least the Ebro, which I have been following for a few days now. Wildlife abounds. This is La Rioja province, and here,…
To live more widely
supera superiora sequi
SafeReturnDoubtful is my alias.
Where is Andy?
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 