I’d recommend you take a look at A Clerk of Oxford blog – it’s always a stimulating read, even if you think you have no interest in its topic: medieval literature and history. Yesterday’s post was mostly about the etymology … Continue reading
I’ve been thinking about Anita Brookner’s fine but disturbing novel Look At Me, which I finished earlier this week, but need to think about it a little longer before posting on it. I’ve moved on to another novel passed on to … Continue reading
I won’t comment on last week’s events in Washington DC, or the subsequent craven behaviour by those who supported them. Neither shall I mention the worsening Covid crisis here in the UK. We’re now in our third lockdown as cases … Continue reading
Sigrid Nunez, Salvation City. Virago paperback, 2020. First published 2010 I thought Sigrid Nunez’ 2018 novel The Friend (link to my post HERE) was an intelligent, well-written and highly engaging read. I was disappointed by Salvation City. Maybe it’s because … Continue reading
Bernard Walke, Twenty Years at St Hilary. Truran, Mount Hawke, Cornwall, paperback, 2002. First published 1935 The friends with the beautiful Siamese cats, who’ve featured in a couple of recent posts, are active participants in the life of the city’s … Continue reading
I’ve continued with daily rural walks with Mrs TD – our permitted exercise during the present CV19 crisis. We’re averaging about 4-5 miles per day, so get to see how new growth is burgeoning as spring warms the earth, watering … Continue reading
Elizabeth Strout, Amy & Isabelle. Scribner/Simon & Schuster, 2016. First published in the USA, 1998 Elizabeth Strout’s first novel, Amy & Isabelle, anticipates relationships and themes she was to revisit in the two later novels of hers that I’ve posted … Continue reading
J.R. Ackerley, We Think the World of You. NYRB Classics, 2000. First published 1960 I came close to disliking Frank, and therefore this novel in which he’s the selfish and biased first-person narrator. His dashingly handsome but clueless ex-sailor lover, … Continue reading
Alas, La Regenta – final post Ana’s plight has often been likened to Mme Bovary’s. It’s not hard to find striking similarities; here she remembers feeling angrily frustrated by her incarceration as a child by her carers: ‘What a stupid … Continue reading
Colm Tóibín’s Nora Webster was published in the autumn of 2014. I’ve recently finished reading the Penguin paperback edition. It’s superb. The author has said (in an interview in 2013 in the Guardian newspaper in the UK) that he’s ‘against … Continue reading