I got lost at the beginning of playground - so lost, in fact, that I nearly gave up on the book. It didn't matter that it was Richard Powers, I simply couldn't get into the chopping confusion of the first few dozen pages. But I persevered and eventually it all came together and was worth … Continue reading “playground” →

Read my dystopian thriller, The Red Tie, for free. From today, I am serialising the book in weekly instalments, dropping each Sunday morning. In order to access the novel all you need to do is to head over to my Substack site, subscribe for free (not 'follow'), and each instalment will drop in your inbox … Continue reading Read “The Red Tie” for free! →

The challenge I had with Andrew Miller's The Land in Winter was its pacing. Part One (c. 180 pages) seemed to dawdle along, and then in Part Two (possibly partly because of the short 'chapters') the novel really took off; it became a much more enjoyable read at that point. When I got to the … Continue reading “The Land in Winter” →

I'm not ashamed to admit that some of the time I had little idea of what was really going on in Samuel Beckett's Dream of Fair to Middling Women - nor that I failed to understand far too many of the words used in it... It's an odd blend of Dubliners (1914), Ulysses (1922), Finnegan's … Continue reading “Dream of Fair to Middling Women” →

If I had a problem with Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question it was this: it felt too interested in itself. That's to say, it pursued what seemed to me a single thread over and over again, the characters' primary purpose being to act as theoretical pegs that could be popped into various belief-shaped holes to … Continue reading “The Finkler Question” →