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Marilynne Robinson’s fine novel explores a question that I’ve sometimes pondered. After all the excitement of the return of the Prodigal Son, what happened next? Once they’d eaten the fatted calf and ordinary life resumed, what then? How did the good brother, the dutiful one who had stayed at home, come to terms with the […]
The Mandarins
I was about 200 pages into this 700 page novel by Simone de Beauvoir, when I paused and considered: was I going to finish it or not? It was the choice of my reading group. But was I prepared to devote that much time to it? I decided to push on. I’m glad I did. […]
Coming of Age novels
I’ve recently read two novels which fit into this category. Giorgio Bassani’s THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS and Olive Anne Burns’ COLD SASSY TREE. In other ways they could hardly be more different. Bassani’s novel, published in 1962, is elegaic. lyrical,and poignant. It is set in Ferrara in the 1930s and we know from the […]
The Other Elizabeth Taylor
I was eager to read Nicola Beauman’s biography of the wonderful novelist and short story writer, Elizabeth Taylor. I’ve admired since quite by chance I picked up an old Penguin copy of A VIEW OF THE HARBOUR about twenty-five years ago in Austin’s second-hard furniture emporium in Peckham (long closed, alas). I was actually looking […]
Well, I’m back …
…and it’s been so long that I have almost forgotten how to blog. No sooner was I recovering from the car crash – plaster off and walking on crutches – than I caught swine flu -and so did my daughter. There have been other problems too which I can’t write about, because they involve someone […]
Holiday reading
I’m always anxious when I go on holiday that I might run out of things to read – or take the wrong books. Two occasions spring to mind. One was a trip to Italy when I fell ill in Urbino and had only the Nonesuch Byron to read. Nothing wrong with it as such – […]
On Not Reading Proust
A couple of weeks ago I drove north to Redcar to put flowers on my father’s grave, the first time since my mother died last year. My father died when I was nine and my family moved away when I was twenty-three. I’ve only been back a handful of times since and I think that […]
Memory Lane
The first book I remember buying in a book shop, or, more likely, having bought for me, is THE BORROWERS by Mary Norton. My memory is hazy – but I see the dark wood shelves (and paneling, too?) of the old W.H.Smith’s on Redcar High Street – which probably means I was staying at my […]
The romance of Abebooks
I love to browse in bookshops. One favourite is Scarthin books in Cromford, nr Matlock, which sells both new and second-hand. I used to go there so often with my small daughter that she got it muddled up with the library and used to call it ‘the library shop.’ Another is Heffer’s book shop in […]