The "inner darkness of the commercial age", with its self-confident hypocrisy and inability to "connect", confronts Bloomsbury-esque ideals and characters in this intimate masterpiece from 1... read more
This slim modernist novel written in 1939 is unforgettable. A young English woman returns to Paris after a long absence to take stock of her life. A study in bleakness, sadness and isolati... read more
Blaise Pascal famously said that 'all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone".
In 1790 a young French aristocrat living in Turin is confined to a ... read more
First published in 1908, the brilliance of this superb novel is undiminished. A love story, or rather two, that starts in the Pension Bertolini in Florence. Catering for English tourists, it... read more
A slim, irresistible coming-of-age story in the tradition of Bonjour Tristesse and Call Me By Your Name, in which the arrival of two American brothers wreaks havoc on an English family over ... read more
DON'T PANIC! And console yourself that as gloomy as things seem, at least the Earth hasn't been demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. Self-isolation doesn't mean you can't trav... read more
Susanna, a stylish self-made woman and arch-observer of her Viennese neighbours, has secrets of her own to hide in the years before WWI. A more grown-up and melancholic novel than Ibbotson's... read more
One in a second trio of reprints of the adored Eva Ibbotson. A young dancer escapes a stifling existance in Cambridge to join a corps de ballet en route to the Manaus Opera House, on the ba... read more
One in a second trio of reprints of the adored Eva Ibbotson. A struggling opera company is hired for a single performance at an Austrian castle, but their under wardrobe mistress has somethi... read more
The story of a young girl growing up just before WW2: the late Morrison's first novel, published in 1970, still outstanding in its fiftieth anniversary year. In telling the 'how', she makes... read more
A story about a young woman in New York, newly married and nervous. Offill has mastered the curious genre of autofiction by shattering her books into deliciously pithy paragraphs: overheard ... read more