What Am I Reading?
Any Ordinary Day – Leigh Sales
The blurb on the front of author and journalist Leigh Sales’ book is ‘Blindsides, resilience and what happens after the worst day of your life’. Despite being a Chatter (google Chat10Looks3; I’ve listened to every single episode since Day One), and despite admiring...
Love Stories – Trent Dalton
Now best known for his international bestselling fiction novels such as Boy Swallows Universe, author Trent Dalton was (and is) an award-winning journalist who has always been interested in collecting the fascinating stories of people’s lives and committing them to...
The Coast Road – Alan Murrin
In the Prologue of The Coast Road (Bloomsbury Publishing 2024) by Irish writer Alan Murrin, a woman is being questioned by police about a house fire that she admits she knows was intentionally lit, although that, she says, ‘is another story altogether’. The story...
Highway 13 – Fiona McFarlane
Fiona McFarlane’s The Sun Walks Down was one of my absolute favourite novels of the last couple of years, so I was excited to buy her new collection of short stories, Highway 13 (Allen and Unwin 2024). And I was not disappointed. McFarlane is an assured and...
The Ministry of Time – Kaliane Bradley
The Ministry of Time (Sceptre Hachette 2024), the debut novel by Kaliane Bradley, is an assured and brilliantly crafted story that is both futuristic and historical, a love story and a thriller, an intimate deep dive into the lives of the characters and a broad...
The Truth About My Daughter – Jo Skinner
The fiction debut The Truth About My Daughter (Hawkeye Publishing 2024) by Jo Skinner is a thoughtful portrait of the dynamics of families, with an emphasis on themes of parenthood and parent/child relationships; pregnancy, miscarriage and fertility issues; and...
Fates and Furies – Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff is a dazzling novelist who writes evocative prose, creates intimate and interesting characters and plants the reader firmly in place and time through detailed settings. Fates and Furies (Penguin Random House 2015) is an expansive saga of a novel that...
So Late in the Day – Claire Keegan
Irish author Claire Keegan’s latest work, So Late in the Day (Faber and Faber 2023) is, like all her writing, a short, sharp novella, an intimate portrayal of a particular situation and character with not a word wasted. This story of only 47 pages takes place over one...
Caledonian Road – Andrew O’Hagan
At 641 pages, Caledonian Road (Faber and Faber 2024) by Andrew O’Hagan, is a doorstop of a book, a hefty, weighty read that tells multiple interconnected plot threads from the perspective of numerous characters. It is a book to be devoured for the beauty of the...
A Grief Observed (Readers’ Edition) – C.S. Lewis
Famous author C. S. Lewis wrote this touching and devastating account of his grief after his wife Joy died from cancer. Short, sharp, meditative and questioning, he struggles with his rage, his sorrow and his faith. First published in 1960, a year after his wife’s...
The Hummingbird Effect – Kate Mildenhall
Author Kate Mildenhall’s novels feature strong female protagonists faced with challenging personal and often also social dilemmas, centred within the broader spectrum of what is going on in the world at the time. Her third novel, The Hummingbird Effect (Simon and...
Long Island – Colm Toibin
Long Island (Picador 2024) is another fine, evocative and literary novel from one of the great writers in English, Colm Toibin. Continuing the tale of Irishwoman Eilis Lacey (from his novel Brooklyn), Toibin narrates the story of her marriage to Italian American...