Category Archives: Book

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Read Close to Home by Michael Magee ★★★★☆ 📚
Sean, returns to his Belfast roots after uni. Joins in with pals drinking & drugging. Drags himself out to be a writer. Trauma from violence, class, the troubles echo through everything.

You’re stuck in this hole with the same three or four faces for the rest of your life, drinking, taking gear, hanging around the local until there’s no one left to talk to.

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Read The Last Days of Kira Mullan by Nicci French ★★★☆☆ 📚
Tricksy whodunit, lots going on. A long story even though I raced through it. Side trip to asylum, with very unpleasant staff. Plenty of detail & red herrings. Gaslighting, mental health& murder turn out to be a good holiday read.

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Read The Ecliptic Benjamin Wood ★★★★☆ 📚
Strangely framed story of an abstract artist, from Clydebank, in a Sixties London art world. I was completely absorbed by the central section describing her life & art. The frame, a colony for troubled artists on a Turkish island not quite so much.

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read: The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson ★★★★☆ 📚
Probably the most horrible character I’ve read about for a while. Ray, old artist with faded reputation, more talented wife & screwed up children. Lots of fun, though Ray didn’t get the complete metaphorical kicking he deserves.

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Read The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller ★★★★☆ 📚
Set in the beautifully described big freeze of 1962. Two odd couples misunderstanding their partners. Echos of the war, class, everything is changing. The book ends with a tangle of unfinished threads.

the flakes skittered, twisted, seemed briefly to rise rather than fall, then fell decisively, filling the darkness with a whispering that had no clear source, no centre. They shut their eyes. They tasted it. Stone-flavoured, the tips of the sky. It filled them with a great excitement of change.