Est. 2022
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Let’s play: Poetry blurb or Sopranos episode?* ‘The life of a deeply flawed individual… The whole is a symbolic and panoramic commentary on the human condition.’‘Despairing, vengeful and destructive… unusually clever, sardonic, hardminded… works of great artistic purity…’‘Encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on, physically and psychically exposed, in that exhausted…
You have twenty-eight days until you can read the book that I think you must read. You may need that long to prepare yourself mentally and physically, to clear your schedule of all distractions, to limber up and get your sturdier tote bag ready – at 640 pages it weighs 842 grams – and to ensure tea and biscuit supplies are stocked up because you won’t find a great deal of comfort within the pages…
Had you told me that I would find all that’s good in humanity at the racetracks in January in nineties County Durham, I may have been a little doubtful. But Louise Powell’s novel Underdogs offers just that. Admittedly there are a fair number of fights, dirty dealings and no small element of tragedy yet the story of this impoverished, rain-soaked world told by ten-year-old George shines as brightly…
Switzy 18.99 Pre-order Now View basket John of John 20.00 Add to basket View basket The Palm House 16.99 Add to basket View basket All Them Dogs 18.99 Add to basket View basket Helen of Nowhere 12.99 Add to basket View basket The End of Everything 16.99 Add to basket View basket May We Feed the King 14.99 Add to basket View basket The Renovation 16.99 Add to basket View basket The Things We Never…
Thanks for asking but no, I won’t be watching Christopher Nolan’s new film. Really I have nothing against Matt Damon running around shouting at other men, beset by irresistible women whose sole purpose is him, and occasionally mumbling something about his wife. But I’m reading Emily Wilson’s book about translating ancient literature (into English, rather than for IMAX) and it’s going to take more…
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who stand before an active volcano and think, Blimey, a volcano and those who stand before an active volcano and think, I should move here. Helena Attlee is in the latter camp. After years of visiting Sicily, she decided to settle on the slopes of Etna for a season. The volcano had been erupting almost continuously for a year. The windows of her…
Frank Cottrell-Boyce is an absurdly busy man. When he finds time and peace enough to write his excellent children’s books baffles me. He is constantly visiting schools, libraries, playgroups and young offender institutions, supporting charities and individuals in any way he can and researching children’s development, not to mention reading stories to his beloved grandchild. I am in awe of him but…
A library so large its dimensions cannot be expressed in number. Countless books. Plenty of time to explore. Snacks supplied. This must be heaven, right? Wrong. Steven L. Peck’s A Short Stay in Hell will ruin you. Soren is welcomed to hell by a charming Demon – yes, he quite understands that it is a shock that Soren, a good Mormon, finds himself here but Zoroastrianism is actually the true…
There are a lot of rules at Villa Coco: it is not pesto if it is not from Genova; no cheese with fish – NEVER; you must go to Naples as soon as possible, you must be accompanied by a Neapolitan and you must have the sfogliatella in midafternoon. Our young man, the protagonist of Andrew Sean Greer’s Villa Coco, nicknamed Giovedì by the Baronessa who has brought him here, is commanded to learn three…
Even more so than usual, it is play time here in The Heronry. Between Independent Bookshop Week shenanigans for the author Tom Cox, a picture book launch in honour of a mole, a persistent architect great in kindness and endeavour, and some concern about whether everyone else can see the young girl who has taken up residence in our window,* I have been at the theatre with Ana Kinsella, Lucy…
