Bright Burning Things is a quietly beautiful novel that delicately handles the pressures of addiction illness. Sonya, a complex and kind character, pursues a path of recovery when her role as a mother to Tommy is questioned. What follows is an intense and considered portrayal of family life, highlighting strained relationships and darkened pasts. We
Poetic, gripping, and unarguably unique, No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood is a novel on social media that we didn’t know we needed. Lockwood has taken a now well-worn, over-analysed aspect of modern society, and injected it with an impressive poignancy. What follows is a novel that crosses genres, stomping unapologetically through
I had the pleasure of reading ‘Slow Burn On Riverside’ recently which is the prequel for ‘The Same Deep Water As You’ and I’m glad I read them this way around – as when I turned that first page the distinct voice of Jex poured from the pages and it was like returning to a
Blacktop Wasteland was a book that got so much hype around its release that I do what I normally do, I buy a copy and keep it on my shelf and that that saintly dust settle before I dive into it – because as I’ve grown to appreciate over the years, sometimes the hype surrounding
Intimacies by Lucy Caldwell is one of those collections that you’ll remember for a lifetime, a collection that you remember exactly where you where when you read it – it’s memorable and masterful and proves yet again what a force Caldwell is when it comes to the short story form and why she is one
I first came to know of the name William R. Soldan when I picked up his collection ‘In Just The Right Light’ which was brilliant. So when the opportunity arose to read ‘Houses Burning and Other Ruins’ another collection, I jumped at the chance – and boy is it good. ‘Houses Burning and Other Ruins’
When I was about sixteen / seventeen it was a different time, it was a time without gadgets and phones, it was a time when you went exploring with friends or by yourself, it was a simpler time, a time I sometimes long for for my children, a time when you didn’t have to conform
I am a huge fan of Myers’ work having read many of not all of his published works and I was delighted to hear that he was releasing a short story collection with Bloomsbury Books and when I could I requested that book. Ben Myers is one of my favourite British writers, his work on
Slow Burn on Riverside is a beautiful little book that is set in the same universe as The Same Deep Water As You (it’s in fact a prequel) which Chad himself said can be enjoyed as a standalone and reading it this way round you will also get to see character development and a fuller
The End of the World is a Cul De Sac by Louise Kennedy is a varied short story collection, there is a remarkable gift here and there is no denying that there are flourishes of brilliance in her prose and the structure of the stories; but it’s a collection that I didn’t really get on
