Anyone who read my reviews regularly last year will be aware that I have developed something of a book crush on Patrick Ness. He’s a brilliant author and, as some have said of Rainbow Rowell, an author I wish had been around when I actually was a Young Adult, as it would have made my teenage years that much more bearable. He is also bloody good value for money on Twitter, so if you don’t already, you should totally follow him. His live tweeting of […]
Sovereign. Deadly. (So nearly) Perfect.
Marisha Pessl arrived in a blaze of glory seven or eight years ago. Her debut novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, was a critically lauded runaway bestseller. I read it and loved every page of it. Then, she did a Donna Tartt and vanished for aeons. I was about to give up on another novel being published when last year along came her follow up, Night Film. Unlike Tartt, the follow up wasn’t as critically reviled as The Little Friend, but it didn’t attract the universal acclaim its predecessor had. But […]
On Passion
My hand is a human hand. My heart a human heart. My feet walk the earth to which our bones return. Directed by His voice, His hand, by the prompting and guidance of His spirit, what else was I to do? ~ Father Damien in a letter to the Pope The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001. I’ve reviewed two of Erdrich’s other novels — The Plague of Doves, which won a […]
I can’t. I just can’t.
This was really bad. I wish this was one of those “this was so bad, it was good” things. Like that movie The Room, or anything starring Lyndsay Lohan. But this one is just plain old bad. I know, I sound like a broken record when I say that I need to stop with the bad trilogies already. A promising first novel is great, but it rarely seems to mean that the quality will continue throughout the forced trilogy. I was re-reading my reviews for […]