I had been interested in reading this book for a long time; an attempt to show that we can improve the real world we all live in by applying lessons learned through the study of how video games affect those that play them. Can looking at why millions of people the world over pour hours […]
Harry Haller is a forty eight year old well educated man who feels that in his breast he supports two souls, that of a rational man, cultured and well versed in music, art and philosophy and that of a wolf of the steppes, savage, wild and alone. As he faces the early Twentieth Century in […]
On the surface this novel is about twins, Daisy and Vi, who have senses that let them catch glimpses of future events and see things about people, and the ways in which they deal with this ability. Daisy distances herself and tries to lead a normal life, even changing her name to Kate, while Vi […]
Written in 1925 in the time between the wars Byron’s account of a journey through the heart of Europe captures a vanished world just ten years away from being irrevocably changed by the Second World War. This was Byron’s first book and as such there are some points where the pretension of youth comes through […]
There is something very wonderful going on in the American literary scene, it has a vibrancy that in many ways is lacking in the modern fiction of English writers. Chad Harbach’s debut novel ‘The Art of Fielding’ is very much a product of this. This is a wonderful book, strongly in the tradition of the […]
Lucy Moore’s biography of the Roaring Twenties is a masterpiece of popular history, as addictive as a good novel. The book it’s structured thematically with chapters on literature, sport and Hollywood among other things and the switch from subject to subject is seamless so there is a easy flow throughout that draws the reader on […]
After reading Communion Town I felt myself very much desiring another city, another strange, hidden dystopia. Paul Auster has definitely delivered this before, his ‘City of Glass’ managed to unfold New York into an alien, noir labyrinth, so seeing ‘In the Country of Last Things’ sitting on my books to read shelf I was sure […]
Mysterious plagues, vicious bands of roaming survivors, defence parameters, scavenging for food, all that’s missing are zombies and some shady government officials in black cars and dark glasses. Fortunately Peter Heller has mostly avoided writing a novel that falls into cliché. Instead his focus is ten years after the end of civilisation, survivors are few […]
Communion Town is the story of an unnamed city in an unnamed country that is terrifyingly foreign and disturbingly close to home. The novel is structured as ten self contained short stories linked only by the city, the oppressive atmosphere and the occasional character that appears more than once. Thompson has managed to create a […]
I really enjoyed Jonathan Coe’s latest novel, a clever and funny story of a middle class Civil servant’s blundering attempts at international espionage during the 1958 exposition in Brussels. Coe’s main character, Thomas Foely, gets a bizarre job offer to go to Brussels for six months and oversee the Britannia, a pub built at the […]
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