A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel. Hilary Mantel is best known for her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light (2009, 2012 and 2020.) But the first novel she wrote was about The French revolution. Mantel began A Place of Greater Safety in the 1970s, …
Continue reading Blood in the streets of France: the way back story
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood is a 2025 long-listed Booker novel (really more of a novella) suffused with the gray and misty atmosphere of a British seaside village in the early 1960s, animated by fascinating characters, and enriched by the interiority of the protagonist. Thomas Flett, barely 20 years, lives with his 36-year-old mother, Lillian, in …
Continue reading A short novel, long on atmosphere, characters and narrative
Heart the Lover by Lily King shares some themes with What We Can Know by Ian McEwan, the book I reviewed two days ago. They’re both set against the backdrop of academia. King focuses on four young people in college, their spirit and energy, academic pressures, dating issues, insecurities, crushes, parties, and card games (one …
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan opens in the year 2119, which technically qualifies it as science fiction. But the characters and the issues that preoccupy them have a very contemporary feel. It is the most recent in a string of books I’ve read with pleasure by Ian McEwan, including Atonement, Amsterdam, On Chesil …
Continue reading Much awaited, the latest novel by Ian McEwan
