Coming back from New Zealand, I keep getting told that “staying in is the new going out” and this would seem to be borne out by the publication of both Darina Allen’s Easy Entertaining and her daughter-in-law Rachel Allen’s Favourite
Dan Brown became a publishing phenomenon last year with his fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code. A quasi-religious conspiracy thriller, it was an entertaining read that moved along at a whip-cracking pace. So far, that book has sold more than 7.5m copies – you can’t
Elena leads a pretty normal life. She’s a solicitor, she has an accountant boyfriend and she shares a flat with her two best friends. In fact the only unusual thing in her life is probably her name (her mother had a passion for Russian ice-skating). So when her
Trying to keep up with the bookclub reading from New Zealand sometimes isn’t easy. While I’m lucky enough to have a great library close by which has most of the books chosen, sometimes the person taking the book out – ie myself – hasn’t exactly
Over the years, Patricia Scanlan has won herself a huge army of loyal fans. With a reputation built on the success of her brilliant earlier books, City Girl, City Women and City Lives, Scanlan has often been described as the prolific queen of contemporary
After such a positive experience with Keri Holmes’ The Bone People, I recently decided that it was time that I read more books by New Zealand authors. I tried to read Katherine Mansfield but short stories aren’t my cup of tea so I turned
‘Dream Brother’ is a biography of two talented and troubled men who died tragically young. Jeff Buckley was just 30 years old when he drowned in the Mississippi while in Memphis working on the follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut album ‘Grace’
Kathleen lives alone in a basement flat in London, a successful career woman on the verge of 50. Her promiscuity – she calls it ‘availability’ – results in occasional sexual relationships that are hollow, thankless and fruitless
In recent years, the book market has been flooded with Oriental tomes detailing life in pre-Revolution China. Works like ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ and ‘Wild Swans’ painted portraits of Chinese womanhood that gripped the west and pushed
With an unerring eye for the tragic absurdity of the human condition, Self parades an array of mentally unhinged characters past the reader. Leaving us always with the knowledge that the brink of insanity is not that far from what passes for normality.
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