This book has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016 but don't let that put you off. It is presented as a series of documents relating to a brutal triple murder in 1869 on the west coast of Scotland. The murderer, seventeen-year-old Roderick Macrae, is the son of a poor crofter barely managing to … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Historical fiction
One Minute Book Review – Still She Wished for Company by Margaret Irwin
The major part of this engaging time-slip/ghost story (choose according to your own preferences) is set in the 1770s and tells of Juliana Clare, the youngest daughter of a landed English family and her initially routine life on the family estate, Chidleigh. When Juliana's father dies and her dissolute brother Lucian inherits the title and … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – Still She Wished for Company by Margaret Irwin
One Minute Book Review – Soul Catcher by Michael White
Set in the period just prior to the Civil War, Soul Catcher follows the dangerous journey of professional slave hunter, or soul catcher, Augustus Cain to bring back two runaway slaves of wealthy plantation owner Eberly to whom Cain has gambling debts. The prose is descriptive and evocative with its greatest strength in characterization. Cain … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – Soul Catcher by Michael White
One Minute Book Review – Noonday by Pat Barker
The third book in Pat Barker's Life Class trilogy takes up the story of Elinor Brooke, Paul Tarrant and Kit Neville in 1940, over twenty years after the events of the first two books ( 1 -Life Class and 2-Toby's Room) The world is at war again and London is suffering sustained aerial bombing. As … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – Noonday by Pat Barker
One Minute Book Review – The Lie by Helen Dunmore
Shell-shocked and haunted by the death of his best friend, Daniel Branwell returns to his childhood village where he no longer has any family ties. He is offered shelter by an elderly blind woman and, when she dies, takes over her isolated cottage setting in train the events and lies, of omission and commission, which … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – The Lie by Helen Dunmore
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
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 