Reviews 

This is a very good biography of Elizabeth Jane Howard, whose Cazalet novels I enjoyed a year or 2 ago, and who was married to Peter...

Paul Scott apart, this would I think be my book of the year this year. A library book that Paddy enjoyed, set in post war England. Quite...

This is a lovely book, totally different and beautifully constructed. A lonely young Swedish woman arrives in the run down Iowa town of...

Another book unread (by me) since May 1977, when we bought it. I couldn’t (quite) get into it; it was good in parts, but the narrative...

The other big holiday book, and much better than Dickens. Set in Ireland around the time of the potato famine, it involves two...

Read this largely in the garden on a gloriously sunny Sunday. It is a very good mystery, I suppose, novel. A Swedish TV personality locks...

A library book via P, although probably a ‘woman’s book’, I loved this, beautifully written with a really well constructed plot – would...

This is a very grim book, in the vein of 'La Terre', but set amongst the Parisian working class. The central figure is Gervaise, who has...

Tried starting this two years ago in Spain; couldn’t get into it. A bit of a curate’s egg; some of his writing is excellent; some less...

And now for something completely different, Paddy’s aeroplane reading, rather classier than mine. I haven’t read this for years and my...

Book 3 which takes us from 1942 to the end of the war. Lots of events as the girls grow up and Louise gets married to a dreadful man,...

Reluctantly, as I hate doing this, I am abandoning this almost halfway through. It is quite different from what I expected — a...

Started this on our abortive trip to Dorset. A strange book, fell a bit between two stools as a novel of manners about intrigues between...

Read this years ago; Hill got more experimental (not always successfully) as he got older. This is a parody of a classical comedy; no...

A beautiful (short) novel, about a couple who were literally a couple at university, meet in later life when he is married, have a brief...

Read this in English, but Father Goriot sounds a bit naff. Quite a difficult book to read, as no chapters or other natural breaks in the...

This is a long and at times difficult book — quite different from no.187 in its breadth and a huge range of characters. Very difficult at...

Bought this in 1976 and don’t think I have ever read it. It is bloody good. Quite simple, short, and beautifully compressed tale of...

Borrowed a few Burgess books from my Dad after enjoying 'Earthly Powers' so much on holiday. I found this a difficult book; Enderby is...

Tried ‘How Far Can you Go’ on return from Spain, but I couldn’t go very far; too many characters sitting around in a church in the...