Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
I’m a sentimental, emotional, man. I’m sensitive. I feel. I feel big. And Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 Extremely Loud & IncrediblyContinue Reading
Tag: Book Review
The Sweet Smell of Psychosis by Will Self
I bought this for two pounds in a Walthamstow Oxfam. Definitely worth it. A tiny little picaresque novella, less thanContinue Reading
See The Old Lady Decently by B. S. Johnson
B. S. Johnson’s final novel, the first part of the never-completed Matrix Trilogy, has been out of print for decades.Continue Reading
Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa by Benjamin Constable
This is a brand spanking new book, given to me before its UK release by a friend with connections. Ooooh.Continue Reading
Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander
Hope: A Tragedy is a dark, funny novel. Hilarious, yet also quite serious, it is the narrative of the mentalContinue Reading
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
I’m going to be utterly uncharacteristic and not write a glowing review of a book. I found Rabbit, Run a bitContinue Reading
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
Life goes on. The worst thing that can happen in a life is not the end of the world.* This,Continue Reading
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson, and more specifically his volume of interconnected short stories, Winesburg, Ohio, has had an odd history. Once considered aContinue Reading
Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño
I made a mistake. Open. Frank. Honest. I made a mistake. Several people have told me to read Roberto Bolaño.Continue Reading
Ariel by Sylvia Plath
I will be the first to admit that I’m not an expert on poetry. That I don’t read enough poetry.Continue Reading
Ultramarine by Malcolm Lowry
This book took quite a bit of searching to find. I first read about it in Jonathan Coe’s Like A FieryContinue Reading
Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant
Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant is a fun romp through the bachelor pads, newspaper boardrooms, restaurants and theatres of glamorous,Continue Reading
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
This is a stunning, beautiful, deeply moving novel that had me in streams of tears, laughing from the pit ofContinue Reading
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
This is a beautifully crafted and elegantly written novel, a complex and intelligent exploration of ego, aging and self-fabrication. WrittenContinue Reading
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Tropic of Cancer, to use a colloquialism Miller might have approved of, is a cunt’s hair from being EXACTLY myContinue Reading
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is an aggressive, brutal, novel that tears a reader through the depths of starvation, disease andContinue Reading
A Man In Love: My Struggle Book Two by Karl Ove Knausgaard
A Death In The Family revolutionised the way I thought about literature. The honesty, the transparency, in Knausgaard’s autobiographical proseContinue Reading
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
I decided to treat the whole of 1Q84 as a single novel, rolling through from the first volume to theContinue Reading
Nights At The Circus By Angela Carter
At the risk of losing my hard-won feminist credentials, I’m not certain I really enjoyed this. The first hundred pagesContinue Reading
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
I thoroughly enjoyed The Bell Jar. And I realise “enjoyed” might not sound like the appropriate word… I loved Plath’sContinue Reading
One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
This is a very serious book. It’s a deeply realist exploration of a single day in a Soviet-era prison camp,Continue Reading
Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith
This is absolutely my kind of thing. Stylistically experimental, full of various exploratory digressions and displaying a full and rounded insightContinue Reading
The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
This is a strange and complex novel. A long, winding, dense and serious tome that manages to be set hundredsContinue Reading
The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey
This book was a Christmas present. So I didn’t buy/choose it myself. I went in blind. James Frey is anContinue Reading
Catch-up Book Reviews Part Two
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace When this is good, this is very, very good. When it’sContinue Reading
Catch-up Book Reviews Part One
One of the main reasons why I’ve set this up is in order to (intelligently) review what I read, getContinue Reading
Triumph Of The Now 