August is already preparing to knock on our doors and we know what this means, right? It’s Women In Translation Month, the time when we discover – and re-read (he, he, he!) outstanding women whose work has been translated into English from every corner of our beautiful planet. These are the books I’ve read and…
Month: July 2021
Missing Words
Title: Missing Words Writer: Loree Westron Publishing House: Fairlight Books Date of Publication: August 5th 2021 Rating: 4 stars ‘’Life is nothing without you in it.’’ Jenny works at the post office in Portsmouth during the time of the strikes in the 1908s. Having to cope with sexism, a husband who almost doesn’t acknowledge her…
Island
Title: Island (original title: Ø) Writer: Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen (translated by Caroline Waight) Publishing House: Pushkin Press Date of Publication: June 24th 2021 (first published August 2016) Rating: 5 stars ‘’She stands with her back to the low copse of planted trees, looking down the mountain to the village, blue in the August night,…
The End of the World is a Cul de Sac
Title: The End of the World is a Cul de Sac Writer: Louise Kennedy Publishing House: Bloomsbury Publishing Date of Publication: April 8th 2021 Rating: 4 stars ‘’The statue stood in the clearing. It was a wood nymph, lifelike yet diminutive, the height of an adolescent girl. A dappling of sunlight was flickering over her,…
Ten White Geese
Title: Ten White Geese (original title: De Omweg) Writer: Gerbrand Bakker (translated by David Colmer) Publishing House: Penguin Books Date of Publication: February 26th 2013 (first published 2010) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Now and then, at night, sitting on the window seat and looking out into the darkness through the tendrils of an old creeper, she…
The Master of Chaos
Title: The Master of Chaos Writer: Pauline Melville Publishing House: Sandstone Press Date of Publication: July 1st 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’All I wanted to do was hurt him. Death was my way of reviving his love for me, punishing him and finally gaining victory in the contest.’’ In Pauline Melville’s stories, chaos comes in…
Summer (Seasonal #4)
Title: Summer (Seasonal #4) Writer: Ali Smith Publishing House: Hamish Hamilton Date of Publication: August 6th 2020 Rating: 3 stars ‘’No point in asking anyone else to hold your world.’’ In the last instalment of the monumental Seasonal Quartet, Ali Smith introduces to families that have to fight their own demons, siblings who view the…
The Port of London Murders
Title: The Port of London Murders Writer: Josephine Bell Publishing House: British Library Date of Publication: October 10th 2020 Rating: 5 stars ‘’It was quite dark now, but lights twinkled everywhere, making bright oath across the black water. And far away on all sides, a red and orange glow covered the sky, shining steadily on…
There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children Until They Moved Back In
Title: There Once Lived A Mother Who Loved Her Children Until They Moved Back In Writer: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (tr. by Anna Summers) Publishing House: Penguin Modern Classics Date of Publication: 2014 (first published 2002) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Oh, great mother nature! Why do you have to trick us? Why do you need all this mucus,…
Βlue Postcards
Title: Blue Postcards Writer: Douglas Bruton Publishing House: Fairlight Books Date of Publication: July 8th 2021 Rating: 5 stars ”Years ago in the blue mists of memory, there was a street in Paris called the Street of Tailors. Men sat outside their shops like kings on their thrones, and they nodded to each other or…
Taking Flight
Title: Taking Flight Writer: JT Torres Publishing House: Fairlight Books Date of Publication: July 8th 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Νana appeared by my bed, staring at me with vacant eyes that I felt responsible for filling. The pre-dawn moonlight sliced by the blinds iced her skin a soft blue.’’ A young boy has the unfortunate…
The Lost Storyteller
Title: The Lost Storyteller Writer: Amanda Block Publishing House: Hodder & Stoughton Date of Publication: July 8th 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Then there had been his stories, which felt like memories because at the time she’d believed they were true. She’d tiptoed past a knobbly boulder on the moor because he’d whispered it was a…
The Opinionated Reader 