A riveting read. For the first time in years, I stayed up until 3am to finish this book. In this psychological thriller, documentary maker Catherine Ravenscroft discovers a book she cannot remember buying on her beside table detailing a incident in her life that she thought no one else knew about. The certainties of her … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – Disclaimer by Renee Knight
One Minute Book Review – The Luminaries by Eleanor Caton
This vibrant and complex novel, set during the New Zealand Gold Rush, is Victorian in scope and language yet it reads as fluidly as spare modern prose. Thirteen men are drawn together to uncover the mystery at the heart of occurrences on a single night two weeks prior to the opening of the story: a … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – The Luminaries by Eleanor Caton
My Reading – May 2016
Exposure by Helen Dunmore At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier The Wedding Shroud by Elisabeth Storrs
My Reading – April 2016
The House at Riverton : a Novel by Kate Morton Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? by Alan Duff
My Reading – March 2016
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Disclaimer by Renee Knight A Few Right Thinking Men by Sulari Gentill
One Minute Book Review – The Chimes by Anna Smaill
This novel is set in a dystopian future which has fallen back to the structures of the late medieval period. Life is regulated by music, the written word has been banned and memories fractured and wiped. It is not a quick read and requires some initial concentration. The prose is beautiful and fluid and carries … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – The Chimes by Anna Smaill
One Minute Book Review – The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
This novel takes place in three time periods. In the present, Yung Ling Teoh, a retired judge, looks back on her life during the Malayan Emergency in 1951. A former prisoner of the Japanese, she had apprenticed herself to Aritomo, once the gardener to the Emperor of Japan. She wishes to learn the art of … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
One Minute Book Review – Affinity by Sarah Waters
Margaret Prior is an well-to-do spinster who is recovering from her father's death and her own failed suicide attempt. Hoping to bring some purpose to her life, she volunteers as a ‘Lady Visitor’ at Millbank Prison. There she becomes entranced by Selina Dawes, a spiritual medium imprisoned for fraud and assault. The story covers a … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – Affinity by Sarah Waters
One Minute Book Review – An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
A thoroughly researched historical mystery set mainly in Oxford in 1663 against the religious and political turmoil following on from the Protectorate and the restoration of Charles II. It deals with a suspicious death and the ensuing trial from four differing viewpoints. None of the narrators is completely reliable but each retelling reveals new aspects … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
One Minute Book Review – The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Published in 1966, Dominican-born Jean Rhys imagines the story of Edward Rochester’s first wife Antoinette Bertha Cosway and her troubled journey from a vulnerable new bride in the lush tropical paradise of the West Indies to madness and imprisonment in a cold English attic. Rhys uses multiple voices to tell the story and transforms the … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Catherine Meyrick 