Author Archives

Blogger, theatre goer, nature lover and an avid reader of books.

• BOOK REVIEW: In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 01/11/2017 • ( 9 )

  

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is remembered above all for creating a monster – the grotesque but perceptive creature from her 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

• BOOK REVIEW: A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary 1939–1940

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 29/10/2017 • ( 1 )

  

  Iris Origo was known to me as being one of the finest diarists of the 20th century for her moving and compassionate journal detailing Italy’s disastrous involvement in the same conflict.

• BOOK REVIEW: House of Fiction: From Pemberley to Brideshead, Great British Houses in Literature and Life

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 26/10/2017 • ( 2 )

  

  Phyllis Richardson is the author of several books on architecture and design, and in this, her latest compendium, she writes knowledgeably about the great fictional British houses we have come to know intimately over the last four hundred or so years.

• BOOK REVIEW: The Tattooist of Auschwitz

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 23/10/2017 • ( 2 )

  

  In late 1942, when Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov passed through the most notorious gates in modern history, he was a healthy, bright, outgoing young man with a penchant for the company of women.

• BOOK REVIEW: Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 22/10/2017 • ( 1 )

  

  Author Matthew J. Sullivan, a bona fide Denverite, has set his debut novel in the Lower Downtown district of Denver, Colorado, and the City is as much a character in his story as the patrons of the Bright Ideas Bookstore.

• THOUGHTS ON: Novel On Yellow Paper

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 16/10/2017 • ( 1 )

  I rather like Pompey Casmilus, the narrator of this slightly off-kilter stream of consciousness novel.

• BOOK REVIEW: Shooting Stars Are the Flying Fish of the Night

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 09/10/2017 • ( 0 )

  

  What a fabulous title, was my initial reaction to receiving Shooting Stars are the Flying Fish of the Night from Linen Press.

• THOUGHTS ON: Life After Life

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 06/10/2017 • ( 5 )

  It is difficult to know how to define Life After Life, Kate Atkinson’s 2013 Costa Book Award winning novel.

• THOUGHTS ON: Grimm’s Fairy Stories

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 05/10/2017 • ( 1 )

  

  Taken from the East European oral tradition, these stories were originally collated and published in Germany by the Brothers Grimm.

• THOUGHTS ON: Zennor in Darkness

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 27/09/2017 • ( 1 )

  

  The British poet, novelist and children’s writer, Helen Dunmore died of cancer at the age of 64 on 5th June 2017.

• THOUGHTS ON: Nightmare Abbey

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 15/09/2017 • ( 0 )

  

  Set in a former abbey whose owner is host to an eccentric gathering of visitors.

• THOUGHTS ON: Cat’s Eye

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 14/09/2017 • ( 8 )

  

  I reflect on Atwood’s 1988 Booker-nominated novel about a controversial artist grappling with the tangled knots of her life.

• THOUGHTS ON: Me Again: Uncollected Writings Of Stevie Smith

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 05/09/2017 • ( 1 )

  

  Florence Margaret Smith (1902-1971), known to friends and readers as Stevie Smith, was a highly witty English writer, most famous for her perceptive, clever little poems.

• THOUGHTS ON: The Awakening: And Other Stories

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 03/09/2017 • ( 0 )

  This short but impassioned novel, first published at the turn of the 19th century, portrays a new way of thinking; a dissension among the women of North America and Europe, which caused excitement and consternation in equal measures.

• THOUGHTS ON: The Vegetarian

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 31/07/2017 • ( 2 )

  

  The Vegetarian is concerned with obsession, desire, fear, disintegration of family and madness.

• THOUGHTS ON: The Outrun

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 26/06/2017 • ( 3 )

  

  Without a doubt, this book has been my favourite read of 2017.

• THOUGHTS ON: Tove Jansson Life, Art, Words: The Authorised Biography

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 27/02/2017 • ( 16 )

  

  Tove Jansson, author of the Moomins and one of the great idiosyncratic talents of the 20th century, must surely have found her ideal biographer in Boel Westin.

• Book Review: The Novel Cure: An A to Z of Literary Remedies

  By Paula Bardell-Hedley on 31/01/2017 • ( 0 )

  You know you’ve morphed into a literoholic when you start reading books about books – and having just finished The Novel Cure, I must also confess to being something of a literary valetudinarian.