An incisive post-mortem on the state of the Victorian union, told (with a gossipy thrill) through the lives of five couples - Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, John Ruskin and Effie Gray, Charl... read more
An excellent Catalan novel from the 1970s, about flight and return, in which the Civil War still looms over the tail-end of Franco's era and modernity blooms. A marvellous evocation of Barce... read more
A memoir set in rural Wyoming where Ehrlich moved in 1978 after the unexpected death of her partner. There is grief, of course, but there are also cowboys and beautiful descriptions of the A... read more
Against the backdrop of WW2 and its aftermath, a young Italian woman marries and moves to her husband's village in the south. Ginzburg's characteristically limpid prose harbours may details ... read more
Travel memories - some imagined, such as a performance of 'Hamlet' off the African coast, in 1607 - from the amiable author of A Pike in the Basement: Tales of a Hungry Traveller.
The attraction of opposites on the French Riviera - the bohemian and the strait-laced - has lasting consequences for its adolescent protagonists, which play out over a decade. Well-structure... read more
Scanlan's prose is pared back to the bone in this slim novel about an Iowa horse trainer and the scuzzy, feverish world of racing with its trailers and motels...