5 STARS Eleanor Catton, 2023 This is the sort of novel that one finishes and then immediately Googles to see what everyone else thought about the shocking ending. Imagine my disappointment to find that the vast majority of reviews in the major newspapers were nothing more than overly detailed summaries of the book’s premise, with…

Recently, a new friend asked me what type of book I like. Any reader who flatters themselves with the word ‘eclectic’ will know that this is a question that can strike fear into the heart. In the end, though, I came up with an answer of sorts: my favourite books broadly fall into three categories….

5 STARS E. L. Doctorow, 2009 It was as if the times blew through our house like a wind, and these were the things deposited here by the winds of war. So along with everything else, all these helmets, boots, etc. ended up now where they had been deposited, artifacts of some enthusiasms of the…

I read 36 books in 2021 – probably the lowest yearly amount I’ve ever read, and certainly since I started using goodreads in 2013. Although there were plenty of excellent reads this year, when I look back at 2021’s list I feel a little uninspired. Near misses and minor disappointments were padded out with self-indulgent…

I’ve read 52 books this year – a classic number, one for every week. It is down from 85 in 2019 and 100 in 2018, though. However, with my average book length being 353 pages (thank you Goodreads), I think I had a lot of longer reads which took a couple of weeks to get…

2 STARS Dolly Alderton, 2020 CONTAINS SPOILERS ‘When will this all end? I just want someone nice to go to the cinema with.’ The above line was the most heartbreakingly depressing moment in Dolly Alderton’s first novel, Ghosts. It promised ‘whip-smart observations about relationships, family, memory, and how we live now.’ What it presented –…

3 STARS Ben Wheatley, 2020 CONTAINS SPOILERS “I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool.” When Armie Hammer delivered this line in a smouldering whisper, clutching Lily James’s face tenderly in both hands against the lush backdrop of an opulent bedroom which suggested sensuality just as much as James’s tilted head and open mouth…

4 STARS Ali Smith, 2020 Summer isn’t just a merry tale. Because there’s no merry tale without the darkness.               It’s quite sad that this series has come to an end. The contemporary-est of contemporary novels, they have featured current events often of only a month or two before publication, mixed in with stories about…

3 STARS Margaret Atwood, 2019 CONTAINS SPOILERS You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you. In many ways, The Testaments is the exact opposite of The Handmaid’s Tale. There, we were claustrophobically confined to one character’s limited viewpoint. Here, we move rhythmically between three different ones. There, we…