Click here to read, just in time for last-minute present-buying for bookish friends, my review in The Spectator of The Penguin Classics Book, a beautiful, sumptuous, detailed and shaming history and catalogue of perhaps the only classics publisher in the UK that is a genuine household name.
Click here to read my Irish Times review of two new Lucia Berlin books: Evening in Paradise (more stories, following from A Manual for Cleaning Women) and the memoir/photos/letters collected as Welcome Home.
If you’re squeamish, close your eyes now. Click here to read my paperback review of Mariana Enriquez’s very disturbing but compelling collection of stories. (You can open them again.)
Click here to read my short review, in The Guardian, of Roland Buti’s engaging and surprising coming-of-age novel.
Click here to read my review of Anna Burns’ Booker-shortlisted novel Milkman, in Literary Review magazine. This is a novel that’s had a lot of praise, on my Twitter timeline at least, so my lukewarm response may show the unconvinced that they’re not alone.
Click here to read my capsule review in The Guardian of Yoko Tawada’s The Last Children of Tokyo (translated by Margaret Mitsutani).
There wasn’t room in my review to comment on this, but I noticed that the title of the US edition is The Emissary. This seems to me somewhat closer to the original (Kentoshi) and more in keeping with the spirit of the book, whereas the UK title goes for a more eye-catching take on the underlying premise of the plot. I prefer the US version.
Click here to read my short Guardian review of Christine Schutt’s collection of Stories Pure Hollywood, which is part of the Year of Publishing Women initiative by & Other Stories.
