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Ivor Punch is the (former) police sergeant of a small island off the west coast of Scotland. He’s a man of few (spoken) words but a prolific letter writer, which he liberally punctuates with the f-bomb. (Used more as an outburst than swearing, so it didn’t offend this reader.) His letters are funny, revealing, poignant, matter of fact and heartfelt…
Welcome back for Part 2 of my interview with Honno author Jo Verity. (You can read Part 1 here.) Today, we’re talking about her latest novel, Left and Leaving. Photographer Gil is on an extended grey gap-year, working in the London hospital to which Vivian brings Irene for emergency treatment; together they try to establish calm amid the chaos. Irene is thrilled with…
One of the books I’ve most enjoyed reading this year has been Left and Leaving by Jo Verity. It’s a great contemporary novel set in London, in a winter which mutes that hectic city, and is as much a story about the random connections we form as well as the more problematic relationship between a daughter and her widowed father. It’s…
With all the other demands on your time during this Festive Season, your reading time might be taking a hit. I know mine certainly is with friends unreasonably expecting me not to snuggle up on my sofa with a stack of books and chocolate but to be sociable and go out with them instead. One excellent way of ensuring that…
My guest today is author Stephanie Butland whose wonderful first novel Letters to my Husband I reviewed here. Today Stephanie’s stopping off on her blog tour for her second novel, The Other Half of My Heart, which came out last Thursday. Here’s what it’s about: “It smelled bittersweetly of sourdough, and there was the trace of hot, fresh bread in the…
There are three things I look forward to at this time of year: the way blossom drifts like snow in kerbsides, that the Hay Festival is on later this month and that a new Liz Fenwick novel will be out. In fact, it is out. Today. Under a Cornish Sky is Liz’s fourth novel and I was fortunate enough to snag…
It’s a sad fact of life that sometimes we only get to know a person after their death. Funerals can be revelatory affairs. I’ve been to a fair few in the past year and have always come away knowing far more about the person whose life we were celebrating than I did when they were alive. Admittedly, those same funerals…
I lived in Roath when I was a student but haven’t spent much time there since moving back to Wales in 1999. Except for the past week when I’ve been there not once, but twice. The second time was on Thursday evening, when Squizzey and I went to an event with local author Kate Hamer at the wonderful Wellfield Bookshop…
The Burning Man, the twelfth book in Christopher Fowler’s successful and highly popular Bryant & May series of detective novels came out yesterday. Although friends praise the series and recommend them to me, I’d never read one until this week. Here’s what the latest instalment in their case files is all about: London is under siege. A banking scandal has…
Today is the publication day for the second Curtis Brown book group choice, James Hannah’s debut novel, The A-Z of You and Me. Ivo fell for her. He fell for a girl he can’t get back. Now he’s hoping for something. While he waits he plays a game: He chooses a body part and tells us its link to the…