How entertaining can a novel about a whaling family in a tiny community in Australia be? The answer, I was pleasantly surprised to learn while reading Shirley Barrett’s debut Rush Oh! is very. Mary Davidson, the oldest daughter in a whaling family in New South Wales, chronicles the difficult whaling season of 1908. Drama, misadventure…
Category: Fiction
Book review: Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell
Identity, memory, self-worth and desire – all are at the core of Maggie Mitchell’s beguiling novel Pretty Is. When Carly May and Lois were 12 years old they were kidnapped. Missing for two months, everyone presumed they were dead, until they were rescues. Now grown up, Carly May has changed her name and is pursuing…
Desmond Elliott Prize 2015
The Desmond Elliott Prize is awarded for new fiction, with the judges searching for a “novel which has a compelling narrative, arresting characters and which is both vividly written and confidently realised.”. This year’s shortlist has definitely found novels with those qualities. On July 1 the £10,000 prize will be awarded to either Carys Bray for…
Book review: A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray
There is no word in the English language to describe a parent who has lost their child, no way to signify to someone in just one word that this is a person who is grieving, who is trying to come to terms with an unspeakable loss. How we grieve, how a parent grieves, is at…
Book review: Asking for It by Louise O’Neill
I’ve never actually been the recipient of a real punch to the gut, but how I felt when I finished reading Louise O’Neill’s Asking For It is how I imagine being whacked really hard in the stomach feels – you’re left momentarily breathless, shocked, unable to process for a minute, and then the hurt piles…
Book review: In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
I don’t think legend is too big a word to use when it comes to Judy Blume. The author is responsible for many of the books teenage girls (and probably some boys) grew up with, from my personal favourites Deenie and Here’s to You, Rachel Robinson, through to Forever, much whispered about in school hallways….
Book review: Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler
Sometimes you pick up a book that is so well written and so beautiful, reading it warms your heart. Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler is definitely one of those books. Henry, Lee, Kip and Ronny grew up together in small-town Wisconsin. They now lead very different lives, but their shared childhood keeps them bonded. The…
Book review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett
It’s rare that I see a film adaptation of a book before reading the original text, and rarer still that I think the film is as good as the book, but in the case of Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, both things are true. In Jackson, Mississippi in 1962, it seems like nothing is going to…
Book review: Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood
Is talent, a gregarious personality and a way with words enough to make someone who is completely self-obsessed and occasionally violent attractive? I would say no, but Hadley, Fife, Martha and Mary – the four wives of Ernest Hemingway – might have had a slightly different answer. In Mrs Hemingway, Naomi Wood paints a portrait of…
Sarah Shaffi 