Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain
Book Review of Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart is a hard hitting story about poverty, alcoholism and isolation. Set in the early 1980s Shuggie Bain opens with a group of women sitting around a table playing cards for pin money. Agnes, daughter of Liz, is one of these women. She is devoted to her […]
Us Three by Ruth Jones
Book Review of Ruth Jones’s Us Three Us Three by Ruth Jones was an easy read that was a pleasurable page-turner from beginning to end. Us Three by Ruth Jones follows the lives of three best friends, Judith, Lana And Catrin who, when primary aged children, swear on a Curly Wurly wrapper to always be there […]
Ali Smith’s Summer
Book Review of Ali Smith’s Summer Ali Smith’s Summer brings together brilliantly the four interlinked texts she has written with the seasons as the titles. Summer is the final book in the seasonal series that Smith has completed over the last four years. It is set in pretty much real time and traces recent social and […]
Alan Davies’ Just Ignore Him
Book Review of Alan Davies’ Just Ignore Him Ignoring Alan was his father’s way of punishing him. Alan Davies’ autobiography Just Ignore Him, focuses largely on his childhood and the trauma surrounding it. Davies’ mother, of whom Davies speaks fondly, died of leukaemia when he was six years old. Davies and his brother and sister were then […]
Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar
Book Review of Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar Avni Doshi won a a Charles Pick writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia in 2014. Set in Pune in the west-central Maharashtra state in India, Burnt Sugar is primarily an exploration of a dysfunctional mother/daughter relationship. Burnt Sugar is told from the viewpoint of Anantara. who we learn had an unconventional […]
Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys
Book Review of Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys I really enjoyed The Underground Railroad, but I think enjoyed The Nickel Boys even more. My husband enjoys fiction with well-developed characters and a defined ‘plot’ line. The largely linear narrative of The Nickel Boys, at least for the first two sections of the story with a definite […]