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Continue reading →: The Rabbit Trap
Folk Horror – Britain 2025 When I see a movie reviews getting a wide variety of reviews it always attracts my interest. That was the case with this. The bad reviews, and they were in the majority, intrigued me further; most wanted blood and gore, and more action, but got…
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Continue reading →: Stormy AndaluciaAfter just 45 minutes driving from Algericas I found a good place to spend the night about 10 kilometres east of Estepona and directly on the beach. There were a couple of vans there, but plenty of room. By chance, it was a walk from the Jaipur Indian Restaurant and…
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Continue reading →: Stranger to the Moon by Evelio Rosero
translated from the Spanish (Colombia) by Victor Meadowcroft and Anne McLean – published 1988 This is more Kafkaesque and complex than the other Rosero novels I have read, and with something more of a serious tone to it, less dark humour. It concerns a group of naked political prisoners who…
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Continue reading →: Heed The Thunder by Jim Thompson
American Literature – published 1946 This was Thompson’s second novel, published in 1946, and though it got reviewed favourably it sold few copies. It’s always sad when an author real fame is achieved after their death. He had not long previously relocated to California and was working as a bookkeeper…
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Continue reading →: Back to EuropeI left Laou on Sunday morning after 9 days there. It was a good place to stop, wandering its beach and promenade in the mornings, walking into town and the market in the late afternoon, and enjoying the laidback atmosphere of the place compared to many of the other towns…
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Continue reading →: The Secret Agent
O Agente Secreto – Brazil – 2025 Set to the background of a military dictatorship in the Brazil of 1977 if this was to be judged solely on its plot it would be entertaining, but not memorable, and overhyped by the media and its Oscar nomination. But.. ..it is memorable…
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Continue reading →: Laou BeachI’m spending this week at Laou Beach on the Mediterranean, about a hundred kilometres south of the Tangier peninsula and the Straits of Gibraltar. I had thought I would get into the Rif mountains, but this is a very pleasant and relaxed place, and the cloud has been over the…
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Continue reading →: Mistress Koharu by Noboru Tsujihara
translated from the Japanese by Kalau Almony This is an opportune and relevant absurdist novel about power grabbing and greed, related to lust. The Koharu of the title isn’t the usual sort of mistress, she is a ‘life-sized love doll’, owned by a single man of 39 years old, Yano…
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Continue reading →: The Brittle Age by Donatella Di Pietrantonio
translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein – published June 2025 This powerful and unsettling little novel is set in Abruzzo and the nearby Maiella mountains of the Apennines and based on an actual crime. The story concerns two young women at the end of a week of camping in…
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 