Page 5 of our reviews
Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin
Brow Books is a local, not-for-profit, literary organisation that promises to publish ‘writers whose work sits in the literary margins’. Axiomatic uniquely combines narrative, reportage and essay and…
A Shout in the Ruins by Kevin Powers
George Seldom was born in Virginia in the midst of the American civil war. A foundling, saved from certain death by an outlaw gang, who knows nothing of his parents. In his nineties, on the cusp of t…
The Boggart by Susan Cooper
When Devon MacDevon, the last clansman of his familial line, passes away in his old castle in remote, coastal Scotland, his estate is bequeathed to his estranged greatnephew, Robert Volnik, living in…
Staying by Jessie Cole
When Jessie Cole is eleven years old, her father presents her with some baby mice he’s uncovered in their compost bin. She is determined to raise them, but one by one they die over the course of a we…
You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld
Miscommunications and misunderstandings abound in this debut collection of stories from Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep, American Wife). Characters are thrown into tailspins by the return of undesirables fro…
Chemistry by Weike Wang
Can a novel be propelled by indecisiveness? Chemistry, the debut novel by Weike Wang, makes a pretty strong case that it can. In the beginning, the un-named narrator is proposed to by her partner, a …
The Motherhood edited by Jamila Rizvi
In The Motherhood, Jamila Rizvi has compiled a collection of letters all written by women to earlier versions of themselves in a bid to offer guidance and reassurance for those frightful, incredibly …
Concertante! by Les Vents Français
Hands up who’s heard of a concertante? Most people would know the format of a concerto – a soloist and an orchestra. But a concertante has not just one soloist, but two, three or even more! The epica…
The Mercy Seat by Elizabeth H. Winthrop
This is writing from an author at the very top of her game, an astonishing book, with echoes of To Kill A Mockingbird (a comparison I don’t use lightly). Beautifully written, it is heartache-making i…
The Madonna of the Mountains by Elise Valmorbida
Set in the Veneto region of northern Italy, this novel about life in rural Italy between the 1920s and 50s is compulsively beautiful. It opens with a young woman, Maria, waiting for her father to bri…
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