‘His bloody project’ by Graeme Macrae Burnet gave rise to a lot of discussion around a variety of topics. The book purports to be a piecing together of contemporaneous documents relating to the trial of Roderick Macrae for a triple Read More …
Year: 2016
Book Review: – The secret scripture
The Secret Scripture divided opinion – some of us loved it, and others were less impressed not finding themselves gripped by Sebastian Barry’s story (and maybe too much doom and gloom). There is certainly a lot that goes wrong in Read More …
Book Review: – The land where lemons grow
This was a venture into non-fiction. It is a beautifully written account of the history of lemon cultivation in Italy. Attlee’s writing is very evocative, and on the way we learnt a certain amount of Italian history as well as Read More …
Book Review: – Her fearful symmetry
We all agreed that Her Fearful Symmetry was a good read. The characters are interesting and well drawn, and Audrey Niffenegger’s writing style is easy and fluent. The story starts with the death of Elspeth, a middle aged woman who Read More …
Book Review: – The Gracekeepers
The Gracekeepers was certainly an unusual book with many interesting ideas but in the end the story itself didn’t quite hang together for us. The world Kirsty Logan has created is a future society, based on a flooded earth where Read More …
Book Review: – To kill a mockingbird
In choosing to read a classic which has been made into a film even those of us who hadn’t read the book still came to it with preconceptions – Atticus Finch had to look like Gregory Peck and the book Read More …
Book Review: – The Eyre Affair
We all enjoyed this book although the ‘off-the-wall’ ideas were a bit confusing for those that like their time frames and narratives to proceed in a logical fashion! Thursday Next, the heroine, is a detective investigating literary crimes, and as Read More …
Book Review: – In my house
In My House turned out to be not the book any of us were expecting. At the start Maggie is returning from holiday and as she is walking through Gatwick, a young woman approaches her and whispers a single word: Read More …
Book Review: – Ship of Brides
We were all agreed that Ship of Brides was an easy read – and we had all learnt to our surprise that alongside women from Great Britain travelling to the States to join their GI husbands there had been Read More …
Book Review: – The Humans
The Humans is billed as a humorous science fiction tale reveals what it is to be human. Although it is a story of alien invasion it seems more like magical realism. The starting point is that an alien, who Read More …
Book Review: – Life after life
Life after life is a book with an unusual premise: ‘What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?’ The structure of the book is based on that premise as Read More …