Reviews 

No 3 in this wonderful quartet. Mountolive is a career diplomat, who early in the book is posted to Alexandria where he has an affair...

I think I summarised this quite well when I first read it (no.352), nearly 5 years ago. (no.779 above is a better summary of Justine than...

I thought I would give these, or at least one, another go. They are quite difficult and I think I enjoyed it much more 2nd time round....

I think George Eliot is my favourite 19th century novelist. This is brilliant. I first read it as an A level set text probably nearly 50...

1/3 of The Divine Comedy. Inspired to give this a try, partly because Dorothy Sayers translated it, but I couldn’t find her version on...

Re-read this, possibly influenced or inspired by discussion about religions with Robert Spicer (738) and then reading Burgess’ book about...

Triggered no doubt by no 746, I read these for probably the 3rd time in my life and enjoyed them more than previously. But enjoyed may...

This was on the radio and bits of it were set quite locally in Binfield, so I thought I would give it a go. Bits I liked, for instance...

I haven’t read this for years; it is quite a difficult book and one’s memory of it is slightly overwritten by the film. Bendrick’s anger...

Never read this before and I thought it was really good. She writes clean, strong, prose and there were lots of bits of plot that are...

I think reading 714 in Malaga exercised my reading muscle and perhaps that was why I couldn’t be bothered with 715. I think, on the 3rd...

Always try to read one big chunky classic novel on holiday and chose this, for some reason this year. A big and difficult novel, about...

Although I think regarded as a classic of 19th century Russian literature, I thought this had dated badly and didn’t really enjoy it. My...

Bought 1977, so probably haven’t read for 40+ years! Brilliant, hasn’t aged at all and I had minimal memory of either the book or (I am...

A strange book about English provincial life, set unclearly in time, but I think in the 1930’s. The central figure is an adolescent boy...

This was an S&P purchase from Lymington market back in May 1979 and neither of us had ever read it. So that is 40 years of life on...

So pissed off with my new kindle (see 667) that I will read anything in paper rather than spend money with Amazon. But I can’t get on...

This was very good; neither Paddy nor I had read it before, but it is a rattlingly good plot with bits of Jane Eyre influence. A gauche...

This is a huge and very challenging book. The basic plot is relatively simple – three brothers with an unpleasant and dissolute father,...

Inspired I think by no. 641 to re-read this as the books are thematically quite similar, in that both have an obscurely motivated murder...