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Booksquawk: GHOSTWRITTEN
http://www.booksquawk.com/2009/11/ghostwritten.html
November 18, 2009. 448 pages, Vintage (publisher). Review by Bill Kirton. There are all these. And then there’s David Mitchell. Cloud Atlas was a revelation. It’s a rich, astonishing, complex achievement. Following its various interconnected narratives is an absorbing, all-encompassing experience of clambering through layers of meaning, half-perceived connections and elusive echoes. And each of the layers is a bloody good, gripping story which works at basic page-turning levels. If you havent read it.
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Booksquawk: THE KING IN YELLOW
http://www.booksquawk.com/2015/03/the-king-in-yellow.html
March 18, 2015. THE KING IN YELLOW. By Robert W Chambers. 193 pages, Gollancz/SF Gateway. Review by Pat Black. Robert W Chambers’ The King In Yellow. Has had a rub of the green in its eerie afterlife. Referenced throughout HBO’s serial killer drama True Detective. The US author’s 1895 short story collection has enjoyed renewed interest from readers curious to know more about the chap in the title and his dreaded city of Carcosa. I’m one of them. The rest of the stories are not. The King in Yellow. 8220;T...
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Booksquawk: A PERFECT 10: GREAT SHORT STORIES
http://www.booksquawk.com/2015/05/a-perfect-10-great-short-stories.html
May 5, 2015. A PERFECT 10: GREAT SHORT STORIES. Review by Pat Black. Just for jolly – and before I change my mind - here are my favourite short stories. No particular genre, no specific length. 10 The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C Clarke. Sometimes, when you finish a big book, you feel a sense of relief. Even if you really enjoyed it, it’s nice to get it over with and start something fresh. With Arthur C Clarke’s Collected Stories. 9 Cathedral by Raymond Carver. During my dim and distant undergra...
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Booksquawk: TELL THE WOLVES I'M HOME
http://www.booksquawk.com/2012/12/tell-wolves-im-home.html
December 3, 2012. TELL THE WOLVES I'M HOME. By Carol Rifka Brunt. 368 pages, The Dial Press. Review by J. S. Colley. One of the themes in Tell the Wolves I’m Home. Is the relationship between sisters, so it’s appropriate my sister recommended this book to me. I can see why she was drawn to it. She, like one of the characters in the novel, is an artist. The reader is supposed to believe fourteen year-old June—who at one point is mortified that she might have to kiss her AIDS-ridden Uncle Finn (even ...
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Booksquawk: THE UNFORTUNATES
http://www.booksquawk.com/2013/08/the-unfortunates.html
August 2, 2013. 176 pages, Picador. Review by Marc Nash. A book that comes in a book-shaped box! Twenty-seven sections, one labeled ‘first’, one ‘last’ and the reader is free to choose the order in which they read the interceding 25 sections. This isn’t a device for the sake of being tricksy, but the author wants to replicate the random and unreliable nature that our memories work. And what of the overall effect of the narrative conceit? Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom). Hereward L. M. Proops.
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Booksquawk: FLAWED DOGS
http://www.booksquawk.com/2010/06/flawed-dogs.html
June 30, 2010. The Shocking Raid on Westminster. 217 pages, Philomel Books. Review by Melissa Conway. Is by far the best new book I’ve read all year. This book is written for middle-grade readers and illustrated in the author’s unique comic style, with both black and white pictures and full-page color inserts. But even though the illustrations give us insight into Breathed’s vision for his characters, I have to say the story is so well-written it could have stood on its own. Really, truly good read.
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Booksquawk: AMERICANA
http://www.booksquawk.com/2015/04/americana.html
April 21, 2015. Review by Bill Kirton. I’ve written before about the apparent artlessness of Helen Burke’s poetry. The need for that qualifier ‘apparent’ is especially evident with regard to this particular collection. She eventually made it to the. A country her father (whose happy spirit lurks in so many of her poems), longed to have visited, and she seemed to see things there through the eyes of a child on a first visit to. Is the setting for a very funny incident involving an elevator, a policeman (o...
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Booksquawk: SQUAWK OF THE YEAR
http://www.booksquawk.com/2011/12/squawk-of-year.html
December 31, 2011. SQUAWK OF THE YEAR. Wherein we squawk about our favorite books from 2011. Julian Barnes), Empty Chair. S (Stacey Danson) and Absolute Zero Cool. Declan Burke) – all very different but each one totally absorbing, moving and/or entertaining. In the end, though, I had to go for Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. The Book of Fires. My Squawk of the Year goes out to Ed Siegle's. An offbeat hero's journey that takes us from Brighton to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro...
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Booksquawk: !LEONARDO MIND FOR MODERN TIMES
http://www.booksquawk.com/2013/03/leonardo-mind-for-modern-times.html
March 20, 2013. LEONARDO MIND FOR MODERN TIMES. Review by Bill Kirton. I need to start with two necessary disclosures. The first is that Donnie Ross, the author of! Leonardo Mind for Modern Times. The contrast with the following story, Sky Blue. Feel of the sort of language he’s inventing. It’s a very funny version of the story of the Viking invasion of. A historical aside which anticipates, albeit with its tongue firmly in its cheek, the historical sweep of the next phase of the book. And forward into a...
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Booksquawk: DREADFUL TALES
http://www.booksquawk.com/2015/04/dreadful-tales.html
April 7, 2015. 436 pages, Headline Feature. Review by Pat Black. You know how I got all sniffy about Richard Laymon a while ago? 8220;He’s a bit much, pervy sex, dodgy about women, blah blah”? Remember how I said I wouldn’t go back to him? Was released in 2000, a year before Laymon’s death. It’s a collection of his short stories, and offers a flavour of his work from the earliest point of his career in the mid-seventies, right up until the end. Which can be incredibly nasty. We start with the knowing set...
