I’d had this book for a while – I loved McCracken’s previous work - but hadn’t read it because my sister fell ill, and I didn’t feel that I could deal with a book that talked about death. And then my sister died, and I picked the book up, and I couldn’t have made a better choice.
Some books are just necessary, and this one, so perfectly pitched it moved from pain to aphorism to a hard-won and never flippant wit, was the right book at the right time.
I tweeted how much I loved it, and the author replied, "Good grief, Charles", and I think that sums the work up perfectly. It finds goodness in grief and grief in goodness—a wonderful book.
Named a Top Ten Best Book of the Year by Time and People
Named a Best Book of the Year by: Washington Post * Kirkus Reviews * New Yorker * Chicago Public Library * NPR * Oprah Daily * Philadelphia Enquirer
A taut, groundbreaking new novel from bestselling and award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken, about a writer’s relationship with her larger-than-life mother—and about the very nature of writing, memory, and art
Ten months after her mother’s death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother’s, and as the…
Antti Tuomainen is a total original, a combination of Scandi noir and almost slapstick comedy, a genius of incongruity rendered, somehow, credible and even inevitable by the sheer skill of the author.
The Moose Paradox is the book that, in a difficult year, made me laugh loudest and jump highest from my seat and convinced me that anything at all can be overcome with courage, humor, and a substantial dose of luck.
It’s filled with wit, subtle and otherwise, unforeseen and yet entirely believable twists and, well, just ‘wow’ moments (I say this as a reader and as a – somewhat envious - fellow writer). It’s also, in its idiosyncratic way, rather sexy.
Insurance mathematician Henri has his life under control, when a man from the past appears and a shady trio take over the adventure park's equipment supply company ... Things are messier than ever in the absurdly funny, heart-stoppingly tense second instalment in Antti Tuomainen's bestselling series...
'In these uncertain times, what better hero than an actuary?' Chris Brookmyre
'One of those rare writers who manages to deftly balance intrigue, noir and a deliciously ironic sense of humour ... a delight' Vaseem Khan
'What a book! Antti has managed to put the fun into funerals and take it out of fun…
Families. What would we do without them? Molly Keane strips a family down to its bare essentials in this fabulous novel.
It's fabulous because Good Behaviour has something of the best fairy tales about it, a magical quality in the setting and the life described. It also, and this is why I loved the book so much, has a fantastically awful mother.
I was lucky; I had a wonderful mother, and yet I’m paradoxically drawn to depictions of her opposite. I love reading about terrible mothers and frequently introduce them into my own work.
Aroon, the galumphing, unloved, and unreliable narrator of the story, is the hapless victim of, at best, her mother’s indifference and, at worst, her outright cruelty, which makes the climax of this novel all the more satisfying.
A BBC TWO BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK (BOOKER PRIZE GEMS)
'Molly Keane is a mistress of wicked comedy' Vogue
'I really wish I had written this book. It's a tragi-comedy set in Ireland after the First World War. A real work of craftsmanship' Hilary Mantel
I do know how to behave - believe me, because I know. I have always known . . .
Behind the gates of Temple Alice, the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St Charles, large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of…
One November evening in a gentlemen’s club in Victorian London, the moneyed but listless Edward Monteith listens to tales of the supernatural and life after death.
His curiosity leads him to a séance, where he falls under the spell of a beautiful flower seller. But Victorian society does not look kindly on love between a gentleman of means and a Romani girl. When he faces being cut off by his father, Edward makes a decision with horrifying consequences.
Two years later, Edward is married and anticipating the birth of his first child. But the wrongs of the past are not so easily forgotten, and the boundary between the living and the dead begins to shrink.
