Here are two books about travelling in Britain that couldn’t be more different, since one is a real life contemporary travelogue and the other is fiction set in the Plague Year of 1348. But I liked both of them a great deal and so I’m taking the opportunity to pair them up (so there!) I … Continue reading Company of Liars and Are We Nearly there Yet?
There’s a lot to be said for a catchy title. I mean, never having read a Western (oops, I’m forgetting All the Pretty Horses) and with a strong tendency to avoid cowboy films, what else would have made me pick up The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt except the desire to work out if it was … Continue reading The Sisters Brothers
This week I was delighted to read Emma Darwin’s post with advice on prologues, particularly as it confirmed my own somewhat jaundiced view that a prologue is more likely to hold-up proceedings that engage the reader, and even a good one is a risk, at least for a wannabe author. Then, lo, up popped an … Continue reading Warning: epilogues can damage your imagination
In State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (this is the first of her novels I’ve read) Maria Singh works for a pharmaceutical company in Minnesota and the last place she wants to go is Brazil, in particular the tributary of the Amazon where her good friend and colleague Anders Eckman has just met his death. But Maria … Continue reading State of Wonder
Once you’ve started to write a novel and to reflect on how it can be achieved, reading becomes not just entertainment but also a learning experience. That’s why I sometimes hesitate to post book reviews here, and why I’ve decided to rename some of them as ‘Writer’s reads’, because the aim is not so much … Continue reading A Writer Reads: Maggie O’Farrell
Ali Bacon, Author 