I share my thoughts on one of the most adored children’s novels of all time.
Book Reviews
Paula Bardell-Hedley reviews a variety of books.
BOOK REVIEW: Doggerland
A cleverly inventive, well-crafted debut novel about loneliness and hope – set on an offshore windfarm in the near future.
BOOK REVIEW: The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man: Essential Stories
A collection of Franz Kafka’s short stories showcasing his dark imagination and wry humour.
READING: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
We look back at a powerful memoir exploring death, illness, marriage and memory from an iconic American writer.
THE CLASSICS CLUB: Treasure Island
A voyage for buried treasure spells trouble for cabin boy Jim Hawkins, who finds himself in the middle of a mutiny with some of the nastiest pirates to ever sail the seven seas.
READING: Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood
We look back at the 1981 political thriller ‘Bodily Harm’ for Margaret Atwood Reading Month.
BOOK REVIEW: Crimson
Crimson is a tale of love, lust, despondency and queer life in modern Greenland.
THE CLASSICS CLUB: The Haunting of Hill House
A classic supernatural thriller by an author who helped define the genre.
REREADING: Matilda by Roald Dahl
Reading the original, magical story after thirty years before sampling a collectors edition with a brand new cover from Quentin Blake.
BOOK REVIEW: Murder by the Book: The crime that shocked Victorian literary London
A gripping investigation into a crime that scandalized literary London.
THE CLASSICS CLUB: Alias Grace
Based on the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s, Margaret Atwood has created an extraordinarily potent tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery.
BOOK REVIEW: The Cake Tree in the Ruins
A necessarily brief review (I’m posting this from a sandy beach in Cyprus) of a dark but inventive short story collection set on 15th August 1945 – the day Japan surrendered and the Second World War formerly ended.
THOUGHTS ON: Autumn (Seasonal #1)
Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic once-in-a-generation summer.
BOOK REVIEW: Green Almonds: Letters from Palestine
A glimpse into a complex situation through the eyes of a naive young woman who discovers a country, makes friends, falls in love and is confronted with the plight of the Palestinians.
BOOK REVIEW: Where the World Ends
In the summer of 1727, a party of men and boys are put ashore on a remote sea stac to harvest birds for food. No one returns to collect them. How will they survive?
BOOK REVIEW: An Untouched House
A short but shocking Dutch war classic by a writer who has drawn comparisons to Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut.
BOOK REVIEW: Home is Nearby
Magdalena McGuire’s debut novel is a vivid and intimate exploration of a young woman’s struggle to find her place in the world.
BOOK REVIEW: Invitation to a Bonfire
A seductive, sensual and sinister love triangle set in 1930s America and inspired by the infamous Nabokov marriage.
BOOK REVIEW: The Silence of the Girls
From the Booker Prize-winning author of Regeneration and one of our greatest contemporary writers on war comes a reimagining of the most famous conflict in literature – the legendary Trojan War.
BOOK REVIEW: The Beekeeper of Sinjar
Dunya Mikhail tells the harrowing but often moving stories of women who have managed to escape the clutches of ISIS.
