My reading journey feels like the kind of trek where, exhausted, you make for the brow of the hill just ahead of you, only to discover that an even higher hill lies just beyond.
Read MoreReview: Great Novellas
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Great Novellas
Review: Ethan Frome
(Amended) The pages in my copy are marked (in pencil of course) all the way through, to highlight wonderfully-crafted sentences.
Read MoreReview: Chronicle of a death foretold
It was with some foreboding that I opened this book.
Read MoreReview: Who will run the frog hospital
If you like stories about teenaged angst, and especially female teenaged angst, you will like this book. Well I don’t and I didn’t.
Read MoreReview: The Comfort of Strangers
Rather than write the traditional sort of review, I thought I would do it in the form of one of those quizzes one sees in popular magazines. Answer each question honestly, and keep a note of your answers on a sheet of paper so you can add up the score at the end.
Read MoreReview: Giovanni's Room
Giovanni’s Room, which is the only work of James Baldwin’s that I’ve read so far apart from a few articles, also starts at the end. The result is a story that is intriguing and gripping within the first few minutes.
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Review: Closely Observed Trains
There is some very beautiful writing in this book, and plenty of humour.
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Click the cover to see the book on Amazon UK (affiliate link)
Review: Bonjour Tristesse
Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t pick up the (fictitious) memoir of a 17 year-old girl….
Read MoreReview: The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
I loved the writing. Some of it is very funny, all of it is well-observed.
Read MoreReview: The Kreutzer Sonata, by Tolstoy
The real question is: was she or wasn’t she?
Read MoreReview: First Love, by Turgenev
This is the story of a boy of 15 falling in love for the first time, as related by his middle-aged self. What can I say?
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