The Seal Wife by Kathryn Harrison

This is a strange book. Erotic, mysterious and atmospheric. Bigelow is sent to Anchorage, Alaska, without proper clothing or supplies, in July 1915 by the government to establish a weather station. He’s unsettled by the roughness of the place. It’s the land of Jack London, but Bigelow is no brute, though others are. He cables [...]

Read Full Post »

Valentine’s Week on VL

It’s Valentine’s Week on Vulpes Libris! We wanted to celebrate, but not in the usual way, so we gathered a collection of pieces looking at Love from unconventional angles. Plus we have an on the ground report from Book Fox Moira as she judges the entries in The Romantic Novel of the Year Award Monday- [...]

Read Full Post »

Just The Three Of Us, by Clare Dowling

No 1 Irish Times bestseller Clare Dowling’s Just the Three of Us is a perceptive yet humorous account of the pain caused by adultery – between middle-aged Bob and young Debra. The story is told, by alternate chapters, through the rose-tinted eyes of his mistress, and Geri, his incredulous, devastated wife. Debra has long been [...]

Read Full Post »

The Favoured Child by Philippa Gregory

This got my “Most Frustrating Book of the Year 2009” award. As I am not in the habit of awarding such titles to books, this is a big deal. I picked up this book because I had always thought of Gregory as an historical author, who only dealt in historical events (she is, after all, [...]

Read Full Post »

Testimony by Anita Shreve: sex and fragility in the neighbourhood school

At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal breaks. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on camera. A Pandora’s box of revelations, the graphic images trigger a chorus of voices – those of the men, women, teenagers and parents involved in the scandal – testimonies [...]

Read Full Post »

Keep the Aspidistra Flying, by George Orwell

“Before, he had fought against the money code, and yet he had clung to his wretched remnant of decency. But now it was precisely from decency that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; to cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge [...]

Read Full Post »

Cuba: a new history, by Richard Gott

Richard Gott is not an academic historian, but he is most certainly a Latin American specialist.  Gott is one of what I suspect is a dying breed: the journalist who combines extensive experience of their region of interest with a thorough and rigorous body of knowledge.  He is also a partisan.  That is a difficult [...]

Read Full Post »

The Wit in the Dungeon by Anthony Holden

Leigh Hunt is almost forgotten now, even among readers, but in his heyday he was part of a circle that included the literary and artistic giants of the time. He was so influential that he was jailed for remarks against the Royal family and jealously mocked by lesser writers. Quite prolific, he wrote theater and [...]

Read Full Post »