“Sipsworth” by Simon Van Booy

by | Aug 1, 2024 | Book review, Fiction

This was such a unique and wonderful short read. After 60 years living in Australia, Helen Cartwright moves back to England to spend her last remaining years. She has lost her son and her husband and the lonely routine of her day causes her to wonder whether life is...

“Miss Benson’s Beetle” by Rachel Joyce

by | Jul 16, 2024 | Book review, Fiction

I found this book totally uplifting, charming and hilarious but with a sprinkling of trauma and unexpected violence!  Marjorie Benson gives up her school teaching job to go on an expedition to the South Pacific to find the Golden Beetle of New Caledonia, an insect...

“THE safekeep” by Yael van der Wouden

by | Jul 1, 2024 | Book review, Fiction

This debut novel by Yael van der Wouden is full of tension and had me intrigued from the first page. The book is set in Holland in the early 1960s  and centers around a house currently occupied by a single woman called Isabel. We learn that Isabel has grown up in the...

“The Postcard” by Anne Berest

by | Apr 1, 2024 | Book review, Fiction

A mysterious postcard with no signature or explanation arrives one morning at the author’s mother’s house. Just four names are written on the card – Ephraim, Emma, Noemie, and Jacques, four relatives all killed at Auschwitz. Who sent it and what does it mean?...

“Three Men in a Boat” by Jerome K Jerome

by | Mar 1, 2024 | Book review, Fiction

I must admit that I haven’t actually read Three Men in a Boat but only listened to it on audio narrated by Martin Jarvis. It is one of the funniest laugh-out-loud books I have ever heard!  It is incredible to think that it was written in 1889 and still has much...