Call of the Curlew begins on 30 December 2015. 86-year-old Virginia Wrathmell has known for years that one New Year’s Eve she will walk onto the marsh and meet her end there. She has been waiting for a sign. The sign has now appeared on her doorstep in the form of a fragile curlew’s skull. … Continue reading Book Review – Call of the Curlew by Elizabeth Brooks
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One Minute Book Review – Sumerford’s Autumn by Barbara Gaskell Denvil
Sumerford’s Autumn begins in 1497, twelve years after Henry VII won the crown of England by defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. The Earl of Sumerford, who fought on the wrong side, has been doing his best ever since to rehabilitate the family name and keep his family below notice of the king. … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – Sumerford’s Autumn by Barbara Gaskell Denvil
One Minute Book Review – The Wild Air by Rebecca Mascull
The Wild Air begins in 1909 with the arrival in Cleethorpes of fourteen-year-old Cordelia 'Della' Dobbs' great Auntie Betty, after 20 years spent in America. Della is plain, silent and shy, but discovers a kindred spirit in her Auntie Betty who has an interest in engineering and manned flight in particular, having seen the Wright … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – The Wild Air by Rebecca Mascull
One Minute Book Review – Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
Grief is the Thing with Feathers is a slim almost surreal novel which through prose, dialogue and poetry traces the grieving of a father and two young sons coming to terms with the death of their wife and mother. Their life in chaos, Crow arrives in the middle of the night and takes on the … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
One Minute Book Review – Miss Nobody by Ethel Carnie
The 19th century produced a great many female novelists from Jane Austen at the beginning of the century through the Brontes and Elizabeth Gaskell to Ellen Woods to name some of the most famous. Writing at the same time as Ethel Carnie at the start of the 20th century were, among others, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – Miss Nobody by Ethel Carnie
One Minute Book Review – Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
This is the book which, in my opinion, should have won the Man Booker Prize in 2016. The story begins in Canada in 1991 with the daughters of two musicians, Marie raised in Canada and Ai-Ming who has arrived from China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The story weaves back … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
One Minute Book Review – Angelica by Arthur Phillips
This is an unsettling novel where reality and the supernatural blend together. Set in London in the 1880s, it the story of a family on the verge of breakdown. Angelica has spent the first four years of her life sleeping in her parents’ room. When her father, Joseph Barton, moves her into a room of … Continue reading One Minute Book Review – Angelica by Arthur Phillips
