The other day, I discovered an alarming possibility. No, worse: an alarming fact. The alarming fact in question was about IAM's, or involuntary autobiographical memories. As the name suggests, it is a series of spontaneous memories, or flashbacks and in the case sited by Julian Barnes in his latest (and last) novel Departure(s), the patient … Continue reading Departure(s) | Julian Barnes
You knew I'd write a book about you someday. You said once that I'd dredge up the whole hit parade minus you. I'll never know how you would tell it. For me it begins here. Like this. I did it! I've caught up on all my outstanding reviews before New Year! Before Christmas I needed … Continue reading Heart the Lover | Lily King
September 2023 Dear Nell, I never thought we'd go this long without speaking. Every day it shocks me that I don't know where you live, if your freckles have faded or multiplied, if you're happy. Nell and Eve's friendship spans a decade from when they first met in highschool through to their early adult years … Continue reading Chosen Family | Madeleine Gray
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somertsetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one... During my year of #ReadingAusten the aim was to read some of the editions on my TBR shelves … Continue reading Persuasion | Jane Austen
Uta-jima - Song Island - has only about fourteen hundred inhabitants and a coastline of something under three miles. Uta-Jima is a fictional island, but it is situated within the real life Ise Bay, east of Osaka and Kyoto. At the entrance to Ise Bay is the island Kamishima which Uta-jima is based on. It … Continue reading The Sound of Waves | Yukio Mishima
A military plane crashed that winter on Mount Vesuvius. The plane had taken off from Naples in fog; some hours afterwards it was reported missing. the search went on for hundreds of miles around - over the Ionian Sea, and at Catania, at Catanzaro. Two days later, when the fog lifted, we could see the … Continue reading The Bay of Noon | Shirley Hazzard
We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever? I started Held the day it was published, that's how excited I was to have a new Anne Michaels in my hands! But I quickly realised I was too tired and too harried by all the end-of-year seasonal stuff to give it its … Continue reading Held | Anne Michaels
This is the story of Bob Burgess, a tall, heavyset man who lives in the town of Crosby, Maine, and he is sixty-five years old at the time that we are speaking of him. Bob has a big heart, but he does not know that about himself; like many of us, he does not know … Continue reading Tell Me Everything | Elizabeth Strout
Australian cover UK cover Monday: late winter, bad weather. the River Alder, fattened by continuous rain, went in spate through Aldleigh and beyond it, taking carp and pike and pages torn from pornographic magazines past war memorials and pubs and new industrial estates, down to the mouth of the Blackwater and on in due course … Continue reading Enlightenment | Sarah Perry
The night light in the blue-tinged glass on the mantleshelf burned behind a book, which cast a shadow across half the bedroom. The quiet glow spreading over the bedside table and the chaise lounge, bathed the wide folds of the velvet curtains, and flooded the mirror on the rosewood cupboard between the two windows with … Continue reading A Love Story | Émile Zola
She returned to the island on Friday, August 16, on the three o'clock ferry. She was wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, plain flat shoes without socks, carrying a satin parasol and a handbag, and her only luggage was a beach bag. Some things should just be left alone. Despite some hints and flashes of the … Continue reading Until August | Gabriel García Márquez
After chatting with both Kim and Lisa about their reading progress through Richard Flanagan's latest book, Question 7, I was prepared for two difficulties. Firstly, it would be almost impossible to take in everything Flanagan was posing in one reading and two, it would be extremely difficult to review the book. It only took me … Continue reading Question 7 | Richard Flanagan (1)
Today I saw a picture of Jude with a child. Not one of the fair-haired nieces I remember from photographs around the Old House, who would be grown by now, but a dark-haired little girl. We've all done it. At some point before, during or after a relationship we have typed their name into our … Continue reading Thirst For Salt | Madelaine Lucas #AWWfiction
Throughout Poetry Month I am on the lookout for serendiptious poetic moments in my reading and my daily life. It's rather surprising how and where a poem will suddenly present itself. Perhaps not surprising to find a poet or a poem in a book, but a recent visit to The White Rabbit Gallery threw up … Continue reading Bao Guang | Roses Made From Water #poetry
Laura Palmer-Archer c.1904 | John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland We were married at six in the morning, and now my brand-new husband and myself are starting to our station home, sixty-five miles from the little Queensland township. When the Classics Club announced their latest Dare - Love is in the Air, I went … Continue reading A Bush Honeymoon | Laura M. Palmer-Archer
