When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

Review by Audrey Chaix. An orphaned teenage girl. A train wreck. A kidnapped mother and her baby. When will there be good news indeed? From the first chapter, Atkinson’s novel is riddled with the worst news you could ever get: a stranger comes out of the wheat in a sun scorched field, to stab a [...]

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The Bones of Summer ~ by Anne Brooke

(The moody photograph of a Devon farmhouse is courtesy of  myDefinition on Flickr and reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.  We decided against reproducing the actual book cover – which is stunning – because we know that one or two of our readers actually have a problem with such images – but you can see [...]

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Profiles in Humanity by Warren I. Cohen

In the ‘60’s, it seemed possible to change the world. Women’s rights, racial equality, environmental awareness, opposition to an unjust war, those were all issues that were opening people’s minds and changing behavior. It was a heady feeling that even infected someone like me, who was too young to actually do anything besides draw peace [...]

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Coming Up on Vulpes Libris

We have an eclectic mix this week on VL, but the undercurrent to them all is behavior; good, bad and seductive. We are also pleased to welcome a new guest reviewer, Audrey, who will be making her debut on Wednesday. Monday – Jackie looks at people who changed the world in Profiles in Humanity by [...]

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The Spare Room by Helen Garner

This is a book about dying. About cancer. About the appalling strains that are put on the living in the face of terminal illness; about how people cope; about how people lie to themselves and to others, determined to cling onto life no matter what. About how all of us cling to certain values for [...]

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The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave + GIVEAWAY

Certain characters in fiction engender the kind of morbid fascination that one would normally reserve for the spectacle of a thick-legged house spider chomping on a crane fly. Bunny Munro – travelling salesman, vagina enthusiast and serial masturbator – is one such character. His infidelity to his long-suffering wife is legendary. He ‘pounds’ a prostitute, [...]

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The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

“But a knife ain’t just a thing, is it? It’s a choice, it’s something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don’t. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again.” Public Health Warning: This book contains [...]

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Rough Music by Patrick Gale

Until now I have resisted the urge to write a review on anything by Patrick Gale because I felt my review would be too glowing. Writing about The Facts of Life, for example, would have been the literary equivalent of “Marry me.” (Yes, it’s that good a book, please go and read it). I started [...]

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