Reviews 

P enjoyed this; I found it readable but no more. It is short – about a Parisian girl who finds an eccentric Iranian who distributes books...

This must have been a present from one of the kids, as it has sat in my bookcase for years and I have no memory of having read it before....

Another John Fowles. Quite a strange book about a man who kidnaps a girl with whom he is obsessed and imprisons her in his cellar. But...

Thought I would try another one. This (unless I have totally misunderstood the plotting) was 5 mid/ short length stories, within some...

Coincidentally (?), another book about Victorian adultery. I really enjoyed most of this but got lost, typically, towards the end....

Recommended on BBC’s A Good Read, and I had never read any of hers before. Good, but I struggled to understand the underlying theme. Set...

This was a very long and quite difficult book and I can’t pretend I really enjoyed it. The central character (Toby) gets beaten up (for...

Brilliant. As the blurb/a reviewer says, partly a hymn to Paris, but also via the alternating and very different narrators, an...

Enjoyed this a lot (must have read it before). Quite similar, structurally, to John Lanchester’s ‘Capital’, but Faulkes is a better...

The 2nd long library book in 4 days. This one was much better written than the last, although I was disappointed by the ending. A woman...

A library book of Paddy’s, about how reading helped a girl to (partially) overcome her anorexia. I found it quite annoying; the author is...

Pretty obscure and not very good. A story about a hippie girl who befriends a family across the Minnesota lake from where they live, who...

The first and I think the best of her books; none of the others are as good. Get this on Amazon

No 6/6 of the Dublin murder mysteries, of which I hoped to save at least 3 until we go on holiday. They are very long. Antoinette Conway...

Was hoping to save at least a couple of these books until we go on holiday in June, but that is not going to happen now. Have to re-read...

No. 4 in the series. I am not sure this was a good as 1-3, but it wasn’t at all bad. The central figure in this one is a minor figure in...

No.3 in this very good series. All the books are completely different and feature a different lead police character. This one involves...

This woman is a fantastic writer. I probably enjoyed this less than 470, but it was still very good, I just found it dragged a little in...

Book of the year so far. A brilliant crime novel, quasi-police procedural, set in or near Dublin. Plotting exceptional, writing very good...

Took this to Spain for aeroplane reading. I had remembered it mainly as a ‘French resistance’ novel with the dropped in British heroine,...