Now this is more like it. This thriller was indeed that and more. Just because I raced through this in one feverish afternoon and early evening does not mean that I skimmed the thing. Many times I had to go back and re-read a passage, not because it was unclear or convoluted, but because the writing was so damned dazzling. Rachel is a drunk. Her husband left her for another woman. Divorced, a friend has taken her in. She lost her job months ago when […]
The first “must read” book of 2015 has arrived
This should have been my Cannonball. One of the joys of becoming a Cannonball Reader and starting this blog has been occasionally managing to get my hands on an advance reading copy of an upcoming novel. And this one, which is published mid January 2015, is a real treat. It’s being touted as the next Gone Girl and the first must read book of 2015. SJ Watson, who made a huge splash with his own debut novel a few years back, is quoted on the cover. And […]
Or, The Shock of the Fall
‘I’ll tell you what happened because it will be a good way to introduce my brother. His name’s Simon. I think you’re going to like him. I really do. But in a couple of pages he’ll be dead. And he was never the same after that.’ Published in the USA as “Where The Moon Isn’t”, I have no idea why. Nathan Filer won the Costa Book of the Year award last year for this intensely well crafted debut novel, and now I have read it, […]
Kind of like The Secret History…..
A debut novel and one picked as an Amazon Rising Star this year, Haynes has written something that I feel can’t help but draw comparisons to The Secret History. Our narrator, Alex Morris, has lost her fiancé in horrific circumstances and to help recover, leaves her London life behind, moves to Edinburgh and takes a job at a Pupil Referral Unit, a unit run by one of her best friends from her University days. One particular class of five awkward, wayward, unpleasant and yes violent teens gets […]