Read: The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys ★★★★☆ 📚
Hot sweaty, feverish & confusing, unreliable narrators & characters, pickled by heat and rum.
Tag: ★★★★
Read: A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore ★★★★☆ 📚
Broken characters crumble with the house. Lyrical countryside. The young ones grow wild. Relationships are awkward or too intense. The first world war appears out of nowhere.
Read: The High Window by Raymond Chandler ★★★★☆ 📚
One of a few comfort re-reads. Always enjoy Chandler despite some dated attitudes. This one has the usual slick chat, lots of smoking and a tangled web.
Moist eyes with the sympathetic expression of wet stones
Read: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier ★★★★☆ 📚
Oh what fun. I was caught up. Great ambiguous ending.
Read: Boys Don’t Cry by Fíona Scarlett ★★★★☆ 📚
This one nearly did. Emotional story of two young brothers, I dying of cancer the other getting mixed up in crime. Slightly confusing ending.
Read: Autumn by Ali Smith ★★★★☆ 📚
Partly a lovely story about the relationship between a girl who becomes a young woman and an old man who gets older. Dreams, time, reputation. I am sure much went over my head but I loved this.
Read: The Fell by Sarah Moss ★★★★☆ 📚
I love how Sarah Moss gets inside her characters internal dialogue. Glad I take my phone & leave note of where I go when walking!
Read: The Colony by Audrey Magee ★★★★☆ 📚
engrossing exploration of colonisation & its woes in Ireland. 1979 adventures of an English artist & French linguist appropriating, each in their own way, the culture of an Irish isle are interspersed with reports of death in the north.
Read: Rizzio by Denise Mina, ★★★★☆ short account of the murder. Not too much in the way of backstory, but lots of detail & characters. Fits very well with the painting by Sir William Allan.
Featured image: Out of Copyright, National Galleries of Scotland.
Read: French Braid by Anne Tyler ★★★★☆ 📚
Family story, nothing dramatic but quietly insightful. Personalities and behaviour bounce through generations.