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War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy
The War is Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, which disrupts the Peace of Russian high society in Moscow, Petersburg and various country estates. We follow several aristocratic families as the war...
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A Children’s Bible – Lydia Millet
One of the blurbs describe this as a “funny dystopia” and I can see why, though I feel that would be a misleading way to describe the book. The setup is not dystopian – it seems to be the present day,...
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Reservoir 13 — Jon McGregor
This wonderful novel opens on New Year’s Day, and a girl has gone missing: the whole village has turned out to search for her. It seems that we are in for a missing person mystery, or possibly a...
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Old Men in Love – Alasdair Gray
This is a cornucopia of several different books, fiction, modern politics and ancient history, all thrown together into a cohesive and visually pleasing package. I love it. Old Men in Love purports...
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The Course of Love – Alain de Botton
This is an entertaining chronicle of a couple’s relationship, starting from the very beginning. There is a lot (a lot) of analysis behind the story, which might sound heavy going but is actually what...
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Postcards from the Edge – Carrie Fisher
I read this book about 30 years ago and loved it. It may be a pretty easy read, but Suzanne the protagonist is very witty and likeable and the dialogue is packed – packed! – with one-liners and...
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Definitely Maybe – Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
Malianov, an astrophysicist, keeps getting distracted as he is working towards a breakthrough in his current project. He receives mysterious visitors, and his scientist friends are behaving very...
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The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
This wise and wistful book narrates many episodes in the life of an old woman living with her young granddaughter Sophia on a remote Finnish island. The relationship between the two is sweet, yet...
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Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
This novel begins as the diary of a gentleman’s adventure on a 19th-century pacific island. It’s all quite eventful until it stops, right in the middle of Yes, right in the middle of a sentence....
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Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone – Benjamin Stevenson
This great whodunnit subverts every expectation. Normally in this genre, subtle clues are scattered throughout the narrative, but in this book the narrator continually breaks the fourth wall to pull...
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