Category Archives: Reviews
Reviews
Encouraging disbelief: Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84
People talk of ‘high concept’ fiction, but I’ll confess I’ve never understood what altitude has to do with it. Wouldn’t ‘narrow concept’ be closer to the truth? A high-concept novel takes one ingenious notion and bends everything else – character, narrative, style – around it. The result … Read more
Reviews
Encouraging disbelief: Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84
People talk of ‘high concept’ fiction, but I’ll confess I’ve never understood what altitude has to do with it. Wouldn’t ‘narrow concept’ be closer to the truth? A high-concept novel takes one ingenious notion and bends everything else – character, narrative, style – around it. The result … Read more
Reviews
Bittersweet tale of loss and hope: Vendela Vida’s The Lovers
In spite of its title, The Lovers is not a romance story in any conventional sense. Instead, it functions as a kind of anti-romance, exploring themes of grief, perception, self-awareness, and ultimately hope and the possibility for redemption. Yvonne has been widowed for two years. Her life … Read more
Reviews
Review: Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion
‘What twenty-seven-year-old Johan Harstad has written is quite plainly a work of genius,’ claims a recommendation on the cover of Buzz Aldrin: What Happened To You in All the Confusion? The cynic in me was immediately suspicious of such effusive praise. But the Norwegian author’s novel has … Read more
Reviews
Craft for everyone: Pip Lincolne’s Make Hey! While the Sun Shines
As the sunny days start creeping back, luring us all outside, blogger, baker, crafter, maker Pip Lincolne delivers her third helping of crafty goodness, Make Hey! While the Sun Shines. Continuing in a similar theme to her previous books, Meet Me At Mike’s and Sew La Tea … Read more
Reviews
Personality takes the cake and eats it too: Marieke Hardy’s You’ll Be Sorry when I’m Dead
You’ll Be Sorry when I’m Dead begins, as any marketable book should, with a bang – a story about Marieke Hardy’s long-running obsession with prostitution, culminating in various threesomes between herself, a hooker and her boyfriend. The story is racy, amusing and compelling – because let’s face … Read more
Reviews
Film review: Beginners
After director Mike Mills’ mother died, his father announced, at age seventy-five, that he was gay and now wanted to live a life of candour and verve. Sadly, his father died of cancer only five years later. Beginners is partly the autobiographical story of Mills, renamed Oliver … Read more
Reviews
Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder and Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing: 40 years on, how far have women come?
Ten years after her Orange Prize-winning novel Bel Canto, Ann Patchett returns to South America with State of Wonder. Marina – a forty-something, divorced pharmacologist – is engaged in a less-than-ideal affair with her boss, Mr Fox, head of large drug company Vogel. Vogel is funding … Read more
Books, Reviews
The Fascination with Frida Kahlo Endures: Jay Griffiths’ A Love Letter from a Stray Moon
A Love Letter from a Stray Moon is haunted by a ghost book, an ‘intensely autobiographical narrative of emotions’ that Jay Griffiths, after writing, decided was too personal to publish. So while this fictional autobiography of Frida Kahlo ‘tickles the literal’, it uses the character and story … Read more
Reviews
Review: Little White Lies (Les petits mouchoirs)
Little White Lies (Les petits mouchoirs) is French director Guillaume Canet’s third feature film, following his extremely successful 2006 thriller, Tell No One. Little White Lies is a drama about eight friends who decide to take their annual holiday together.. Read more
