For years, being a (now recovering) literary fiction snob with a preference for British Commonwealth authors, I’ve followed the Man Booker Prize long- and shortlists as a way to find new books, and since I still need a regular fix of literary fiction even as I explore new genres, I’ve started to look to other prizes to expand my library. With Sally Rooney’s Normal People appearing on the Booker longlist and winning the Costa Novel Award, it was an obvious choice, especially as I continue […]
“The thing is, I suppose that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath.”
What Tana French, one of my favorite authors, has done here with The Witch Elm (her first non-Dublin Murder Squad book) is very interesting, but I will acknowledge it probably won’t be for everyone. The two starting points for inspiration on this book are Who Put Bella in the Witch Elm? and the idea of: what if your protagonist was a guy who has never had to work hard for anything in his life? And then you swirl those ideas around for a while in […]