Reviews 

This guy is very good. The books are full of very graphic violence, but are extremely well plotted and the central figure Kate Maguire is...

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

I enjoyed this enormously, but partly because I know Robert (a little) personally and our career paths have run slightly in parallel, and...

Enjoyed 658, so thought I would try another. This was good and well written again, but I found the time shifts annoying and detracted...

I have been meaning to read this for years, but thought I should read more Dostoyevsky first. Steiner wrote this in his late 20’s and his...

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...

This is a strange book; Radio 4’s book of the month for November which is where I came across it. The Loney is a bit of actual (or...

Planned to read this before we went to Croatia, at which point my kindle rejected the card. No pun intended, since it is primarily about...

I have read this before (499, Malaga last year). It is a good book, pretty weird, and my summary at 499 hasn’t really changed. Unclear...

I loved this; she said she likes to write about people on the periphery of major events so here we have a WW1 novel set in Zennor, just...

Strange novel about a Manson type cult set in California in the late 60’s and the fascination of a young girl for an older cult member. I...

Returned from holiday feeling quite alienated from reading and as a result struggled to get into this book (I must index this list as I...

I think this guy is good. Hard to summarise this thematically, as there a multiple strands – Richard I’s attempt to recover the Cross...

Meant to read a Zola next, but got a bit hooked by no.352. This is much more of a stand- alone novel, centering mainly on Mountolive, a...

P enjoyed this, but I didn’t much. You can tell it is a ‘good quality’ novel, but I just didn’t warm to it. The Burgess' are a couple of...

I didn’t read it in French, but don’t like the English translation (‘Abbe Mouret’s Transgression’ which misses half of the point) in my...

Plassans is the village where no.315 takes place, so we have moved back from Paris to Provence. A priest is taken in as lodger by a...

It took me six chapters and nearly 100 pages to find out what I wanted to know. Chapter 7 summarises the recent Middle East history,...

A proper story at last. I hadn’t realised how early in the 19th century Balzac was writing; 1820’s/30’s. So there is lots of classicism,...