Published by Douglas Gibbons Books / Vintage, 2012, 336 pages. Review by Thomas Peak and Susanne Gjonnes Why do we read? To think, to experience and most of all to feel. Perhaps. Munroe’s final collection of short stories Dear Life achieves all of this in abundance. With characteristic subtleness, a refined and homely style, the …
Category: Fiction
Watchmen: written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons
Published by Titan Books, 1986, 414 pages. It is 1985, and Richard Nixon is into his fifth term as president of the United States. The superheroes (the watchmen), who have been helping the country, are outlawed. They are now in hiding, retired or secretly working for the US government. One night in October, a watchman, …
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The Bad Girl (Travesuras de la niña mala): Mario Vargas Llosa
Translated from Spanish by Edith GrossmanPublished by Farrar Straus & Giroux / Faber & Faber, 2007, 376 pages. Original version published in 2006. Review by Susanne Karine Gjonnes Do you believe in endless, unconditional love? The answer to this question is likely to shape one’s opinion of The Bad Girl. Mario Vargas Llosa is a …
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The Matthew Bartholomew Chronicles: Susanna Gregory
Series published by Sphere. Monks and murder in the Middle Ages—an irresistible formula! Maybe it's the mixing of piety and nefarious doings that makes it so attractive. And a reason why this is one of my favourite crime series. It is set in Cambridge in the 14th century, and the detective is Matthew Bartholomew, a young physician …
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In Search of Lost Time; Volume 1: The Way by Swanns (Books 1 & 2): Marcel Proust
Translated from French by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence KilmartinPublished by Penguin, 2003, 496 pages. Original version published in 1913. Marcel Proust had always struck me as the quintessential snob’s choice; pretentious, devoid of action and inundating readers with impenetrable vocab. All of these concerns proved spot-on as I laboured my way through endless …
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The Woman in the Dunes: Kobo Abe
Translated from Japanese by E. Dale SaundersPublished by Vintage Books, 1964, 239 pages. Original version published in 1962.Review by Benedict Craven I recently put down Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes after three intense reading sessions. It is not an especially long book but for me this signified a new record in reading determination, …
The Circle: David Eggers
Published by Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin, 2013, 491 pages. This is one of the scariest books I’ve read—a dystopian novel for our hyperconnected times. A young woman, Mae, joins the Circle, a Google-like firm. She starts out in Customer Experience (Customer Service in the real world), and rises quickly through the ranks. The culture …
The Book of Dave: Will Self
Published by Penguin / Viking, 2006, 512 pages. This is one of those books that was hard going when I was reading it but stayed with me for a long time afterwards. The book moves between the present and a few centuries later. In the present, Dave, a London cabbie, loses his mind when his …
The Narrow Road to the Deep North: Richard Flanagan
Published by Chatto & Windus / Vintage, 2014, 464 pages. A harrowing book about war, love, and the nature of good and evil. Set, for the most part, around the end of the Second World War, it is about a group of Australian soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese and made to build a railway …
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War and Peace: Leo Tolstoy
Translated from Russian by Anthony BriggsPublished by Penguin, 2007, 1440 pages. Original version published in its entirety in 1869. The first English translation by Clara Bell was published in 1886.Review by Kamakshi Balasubramanian Such a joy to have read Tolstoy's absolute, unparalleled, masterpiece now, without the spectre of deadlines and exams. This time around, I …
