If you haven’t read Where the Crawdads Sing, I think you may have heard of it. At the last count it had 53,000 ratings on a certain review site (which I assume equates to many, many more sales) or you could check it out on the ‘unaffiliated’ Goodreads. I’m not going to write a full … Continue reading Sometimes a novel sings, but will it fly? Of Crawdads and River Songs.
I’m quite a fan of Helen Kitson’s debut novel The Last Words of Madeleine Anderson (Louis Walters books 2019) and was eager to read her latest, Old Bones, which focuses on a group of not-so-young women living in a Shropshire village. However, as someone well into my sixth decade (and nearly out the other side!) … Continue reading Old Bones by Helen Kitson: or how old is old? @Jemima_Mae_7 @LouiseWalters12
Robert Louis Stevenson & J.M. Barrie, A Friendship in Letters, by Michael Shaw, Sandstone Press, 2020 “Write to me again in my infinite distance” So wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in the year 1893 from his home in Samoa to fellow writer J. M. Barrie who was in, or near, his native town of Kirriemuir in … Continue reading A friendship in messages: with thanks to #RLS and @SandstonePress
I loved the first couple of series of The Crown – all those stories which formed the backdrop to my youth brought to dramatic life. I only fell out of love when Olivia Colman (much though I admire her) took over as the Queen. However this hasn’t stopped me from following the furore raging around … Continue reading Truth, Conjecture and ‘The Crown’
October as most of you know is the season of literature festivals and this year is no exception, even if most of them are a bit different. Sometimes that’s an advantage: I’ve looked in on a couple of live-streamed events from Cheltenham which I most probably wouldn’t have attended in normal circumstances. Staying in is … Continue reading Literature festivals – now available anywhere and everywhere.
