Read Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld ★★★★☆📚
Midlife stories from mostly well educated, well off American (USA) women. Often looking back as well as moving forward. Despite being set in such a different world, I was both absorbed & entertained.
I might have enjoyed it even more if I had staked time between the stories.
Read: Has anyone seen Charlotte Salter? By Nicki French ★★★★☆ 📚
30 years cold case, investigative podcast, police procedural and a twisting plot in which I never got near to guessing.
The catch by Mick Heron ★★★★ 📚
Amusing slough house adjacent spy story. Unguessable, by me, twists and turns. John Bachelor Is a sad character, looking after retired spies and making a mess of things.
Read Bitter orange by Claire Fuller ★★★★☆ 📚
I really enjoyed this hothouse of emotion between unlikely characters. An unmoored older Francis is enamoured by her younger glamorous neighbours living a temporary life in an old house in the sixties.
Read A Red Death Walter Mosley ★★★☆☆📚
Solid Easy Rawlings, lots of details around the time & place.
Read The Blazing Heather by Colm Toibin ★★★★★📚
Éamon an Irish judge, is quite & extremely reserved, not too likeable, distant from family. The book goes back and forth between his older self & upbringing. I really felt from him later, quietly heartbreaking.
Read Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ★★★★☆📚
The story of a girl from a wealthy Nigerian family. Without being at all preachy the book covers colonialism, politics, feminism, family & religion.
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.
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.
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.
