I grew up in a house of books and storytelling, often reading books beyond my full comprehension, yet absorbing their essence, enjoying the narrative. I place my trust in authors to lead me through a narrative (without every detail spelled out, my imagination free to explore). I want my readers to bring themselves on the journey, allow their narratives to become part of mine. I've always had a sense that things may not always be what they appear, even seemingly ordinary people have secrets and powers that we know nothing of as we pass them on the street, places and objects hold memories and there is no solid explanation for that!
A story of love, revenge and control, and being an outsider. Inspired by the experience of living in Crete, with a dash of Greek tales and mythology and a drop of complete fabrication. If you know the island you might recognise the places and people. If you’ve ever lived away from ‘home’ for a period of time, you might even recognise yourself.
Two women, 20 years apart, come under the influence of a man, an island, and its myths. Ally grew up with stories of the island where she was born; fairy tales and memories woven together in such a way she never knew why they left, or who her father is. When her mother disappears, Ally returns to the island, convinced she will find her there, and determined to resolve the unanswered questions from her childhood.
I read this book as a teenager, and it was the writing rather than the story itself which made a huge impression on me. It made me feel afraid in parts, not because the book is a scary story, but the location is so real, I can feel the presence of spirits in the paths that Rachell walks! The island itself is as much a character as Rachell, the kick-ass heroine. It is about pain and loss and love and passion and, magic.
Amidst the beauty of the Channel Islands in 1888, Rachell and Andre du Frocq and their five rambunctious children struggle to keep their rundown farm. Their hope is revived when they take in Ranulph, a shipwreck survivor. Is he an answer to prayer? A heartwarming story of commitment, perseverance, and family devotion!
I read this book when I had just had my first child. I was living far from home and away from family. I read at night while I was waiting to give the baby her late night feed. It is a ghost story but not as we know it. About a mother, slavery, pain and loss, revenge/redemption. The writing is beautiful and easy. It made me scared and it made cry, and it made me angry. If you haven’t read any Toni Morrison I think this is a good place to start – and then keep going through her whole catalogue!
'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heart-breaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all' Margaret Atwood, New York Times
Discover this beautiful gift edition of Toni Morrison's prize-winning contemporary classic Beloved
It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved, returns as a spectre to punish her mother, but also to elicit her…
Given to me by my sister – who in truth was the person who supplied all the books I read in my teens. I quite simply believed that Gregor had become a beetle and accepted it as a straightforward story - and then as I became older, I started to unpick it as something more complex than that. I think a lot of people know about this story but many never read it. It is relatively short (a long short story?). I really believed Gregor’s plight and the emotions of his family. I have since read a lot more by Kafka and I enjoy the way he weaves his narrative – nothing wasted – leading me through complex ideas and thought processes, simply telling a story.
“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”
With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century…
I found this in a second-hand bookstore in Wales – the title fascinated me, probably because of the Greek Myth connection! Once you suspend your disbelief and accept that a minotaur is working as a grill chef, it’s a wonderful story about the loneliness of an outsider, being an outcast, and how he finds love. A sad book though!
Five thousand years out of the labyrinth, the Minotaur finds himself in the American South, living in a trailer park and working as a line cook at a steakhouse. No longer a devourer of human flesh, the Minotaur is a socially inept, lonely creature with very human needs. But over a two-week period, as his life dissolves into chaos, this broken and alienated immortal awakens to the possibility for happiness and to the capacity for love.
Steven Sherrill is a graduate of UNC Charlotte and holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The recipient of a NEA…
This was on my reading list as part of my studies for a degree in English Literature. I became completely absorbed in the characters and the way their story unfolded – each born at midnight on the night of India’s partition. I really enjoyed the meandering journey of the narrative, let yourself follow without questioning it! The story is an allegory of India’s transition, and I learned a lot about India’s history, prior to this I had been ignorant of how Pakistan had been formed, and the way in which ordinary people were uprooted from their homes, how communities who had lived in harmony were segregated according to their religion. In true writerly fashion, Rushdie showed me, rather than told me. And magic exists in this book too.
*WINNER OF THE BOOKER AND BEST OF THE BOOKER PRIZE*
**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK**
'A wonderful, rich and humane novel... a classic' Guardian
Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most…
I write historical crime fiction, and my latest novel is set in a hospital, a real place, now closed. The South London Hospital for Women and Children (1912–1985) was set up by pioneering suffragists and women surgeons Maud Chadburn and Eleanor Davies-Colley (the first woman admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons) and I recreate the now almost-forgotten hospital in my book. Events take place in 1946 when wartime trauma still impacts upon a society exhausted by conflict, and my book choices also reflect this.
A historical thriller set in south London just after World War II, as Britain returns to civilian life and the men return home from the fight, causing the women to leave their wartime roles. The South London Hospital for Women and Children is a hospital, (based on a real place) run by women for women and must make adjustments of its own. As austerity bites, the coldest Winter then on record makes life grim. Then a young nurse goes missing.
Days later, her body is found behind a locked door, and two women from the hospital, unimpressed by the police response, decide to investigate. Highly atmospheric and evocative of a distinct period and place.
One cold dark night, as a devastated London shivers through the transition to post-war life, a young nurse goes missing from the South London Hospital for Women & Children. Her body is discovered hours later behind a locked door.
Two women from the hospital join forces to investigate the case. Determined not to return to the futures laid out for them before the war, the unlikely sleuths must face their own demons and dilemmas as they pursue - The Midnight Man.
‘A mystery that evokes the period – and a recovering London – in…
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