Reviews 

Haven’t read this since I was at school, but P now has the collected works. Austen does write perfect prose, which is a joy to read. I...

I have read this before, and it is good, but long and quite difficult. The story of two families, one an Englishman married to a...

This was a brilliant TV drama twenty plus years ago, but I think the book has dated. Heavily imbued in the English class system as it was...

This didn’t work for me. Described as "understanding the anger of Britain’s underclass", it really wasn’t about this at all. McGarvey...

Never read this before, and probably won’t again. A short morality tale, featuring Ebenezer Scrooge who is visited first by the ghost of...

The first of, I think, the only two novels she published before her very early death. A simple story about a 19th century ‘middle class’...

I always try to take a Dickens or big 19th C novel on holiday. If Galbraith can be prolix and needs editing, what do you say about...

I can’t pretend to have enjoyed this, although the high octane plot kept me reading, despite misgivings. A police procedural (poorly...

The first book group book. About the five victims of Jack the Ripper. Not the sort of thing I would normally read. Written by a feminist...

Never heard of this guy, or read anything of his before. 1930’s upper class decadence and sexual depravity meets 1930’s intellectualised...

This is really good – I expected a rather frothy and lightweight book from a woman who likes to prance around in period costume in her TV...

Quite enjoyed this. A romance between a 40 year old white woman, divorced with two kids, and a 20+ old black man, who works in the local...

This is very good. Set in Nigeria, Adunni, a village girl is sold at 14 into marriage, as the third wife of a wealthy villager, to pay...

Quite a strange, but interesting, book. Anne Glenconner is a typical upper class English girl, born into the aristocracy, marries another...

I enjoyed this, despite being irritated at times. Quite a big canvass for a debut novel. Set mainly in Lisbon in the middle of the 2nd...

No. 3 in my unnavigable Complete works. If I was writing a critical summary of Zola’s novels, I would say that this is a much longer...

Thought I would try another Dickens after 819 and not really enjoying the 21st century 820. Quite enjoyed this, but Dickens' characters...

We bought this in Lymington in September 1978 and if I have read it before, it won’t have been since shortly after then. Gaskell is a...

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

Quite good. I had heard bits on the Radio 4 book of the week slot a month or so ago. A young, class-crossed love story set against the...