The Last Chronicle of Barset, by Anthony Trollope. In praise of reading the best bits.

… Or perhaps in this case, the better part of The Last Chronicle of Barset. It is a magnificent book – at least in my opinion most of it is. Anthony Trollope is a favourite author of mine, and I fear that he has fallen out of fashion. He wrote over 40 novels between the [...]

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When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman

In 1968, “The year Paris took to the streets. The year of the Tet offensive. The year Martin Luther King lost his life for a dream,” Eleanor Maud Portman is born. Elly immediately grasps you by the hand and introduces you to the motley crew of her family. She idolises her older brother Joe, who [...]

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The Book of Human Skin – Michelle Lovric

This is Michelle Lovric’s fourth novel for adults and like the first three, it focuses on semi-fantastical historical settings, with larger-than-life characters. She favours the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century and individuals and societies on the cusp of enormous change. The Book of Human Skin has a split setting – Venice and Peru – [...]

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Boardwalk Empire by Nelson Johnson

Last year, the new show that quickly became my favorite was HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire”. The hour long show explored the personalities of those living in Atlantic City in the 1920′s. The characters, even the women, were strongly drawn and the dynamics of the interactions were riveting. The clothing, atmosphere and slang were distinct and vivid. [...]

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This Week on Vulpes Libris …

It’s going to be a wild ride on Vulpes Libris this week.   We’ll be keeping company with – among others -  a bonkers nun, a debut novelist and one of Anthony Trollope’s doorstop novels, all book-ended by gangsters and outlaws. So fasten your seat belts, people … Monday: Jackie celebrates the return of Boardwalk Empire [...]

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Crypt: The Gallows Curse by Andrew Hammond

To continue my Edinburgh Book Festival retrospective, I enjoyed a wonderful event by Andrew Hammond author of Crypt: The Gallows Curse.  Having been an English teacher, Andrew’s event was an interactive one with pens and paper and time-up’s and shushing for giggling at the back… it was utterly fabulous! (I enjoyed the back-to-school  experience just [...]

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Iris & Ruby by Rosie Thomas

After re-reading Moon Tiger for a review earlier this year, I was in the mood for something in a similar vein. Iris & Ruby, while by no means the same story, answered that need perfectly. Iris is an elderly English lady living in Egypt, where she was stationed during the war and where she met [...]

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The Commitment by Dan Savage – everything you want to know about love, sex, marriage and family, and possibly some things you might not …

Dan Savage’s mother wants him to get married. His boyfriend, Terry, says “no thanks” because he doesn’t want to act like a straight person. Their six-year-old son, D.J., says his two dads aren’t “allowed” to get married, but that he’d like to come to the reception and eat cake. Throw into the mix Dan’s straight [...]

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Rain by Don Paterson

This book response is written in the form of a short story. For a discussion of why I am trailing this approach to writing about books see my review of In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut. It started in The Gambia. Or came to a head, there, anyway. One or the other. Walking along [...]

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The Fossil Hunter by Shelley Emling

At a recent local book discussion about Hamlet, some members expressed astonishment that Shakespeare could’ve written so well about so many things considering he’d never attended university. I took umbrage, as a college degree doesn’t necessarily mean one is intelligent (case in point: Sarah Palin and Former President George W. Bush both graduated from college). [...]

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