Michel Faber: The Apple (New Crimson Petal Stories)
Usually when coming to the end of a book of brick-like proportions, it’s good that the story is over. Not so, however, with Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal And The…
Yukio Mishima: The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea
Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea is a short novel but, due to its tight plot, brevity is not an issue. Published in 1963, seven…
Patrick McGrath: Dr Haggard’s Disease
For months now, a number of people have been reading Patrick McGrath and talking him up. The novel they’ve usually read is Asylum but, just to be contrary, I thought…
Stefan Zweig: The Invisible Collection / Buchmendel
This nice little book from Pushkin Press, about A5 in size with quality paper, contains two shorts from Austrian author Stefan Zweig, whom I’d no knowledge of prior to spotting…
Ian McEwan: Saturday
Ian McEwan’s Saturday is the story of Henry Perowne, a London based neurosurgeon, as he reflects on his life via the events that happen during his day off. Mixing organised…
Louise Welsh: Tamburlaine Must Die
I read Welsh’s first release, The Cutting Room, when the paperback was released and I read it during a day off work. Looking back, I wish I’d went to work…
Sam Selvon: The Lonely Londoners
First published in 1956, Trinidadian born, Sam Selvon, began his London based fictions with a short novel called The Lonely Londoners. It’s set during a time when many West Indians…
Leo Tolstoy: The Death Of Ivan Ilyich
Beginning, as it does, with the death of Ivan Ilyich, you wouldn’t think there was much left to say but Leo Tolstoy’s novella, The Death Of Ivan Ilyich, then winds…
Tim Krabbé: The Vanishing
Not many books can claim to have been filmed on more than one occasion although as Hollywood becomes more of a recycling plant than a hotbed of imagination that will…
Ian Cross: The God Boy
Were it not for my rather unnatural obsession as regards collecting all of the Penguin Classics, I may never have heard of The God Boy by New Zealand journalist, Ian…