Overall rating: 4 out of 5 stars Ruth and her cousin Naomi live in rural Wisconsin, part of an isolated religious community. The girls’ lives are ruled by the rhythms of nature — the harsh winters, the hunting seasons, the…
Review: ‘The Ballroom’ by Anna Hope
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars Where love is your only escape… 1911: Inside an asylum at the edge of the Yorkshire moors, where men and women are kept apart by high walls and barred windows, there is a ballroom…
Review: ‘The Collector’ by John Fowles
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly…
Review: ‘The Night Rainbow’ by Claire King
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Under the sweltering heat of the summer sun, five-year-old Pea – and her vivid imagination – run wild in the meadows behind her home on the edge of a small village in Southern France.Pea’s…
Review: ‘Life After Life’ by Kate Atkinson
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she…
Review: ‘Perfect’ by Rachel Joyce
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars In 1972, two seconds were added to time. It was in order to balance clock time with the movement of the earth. Byron Hemming knew this because James Lowe had told him and James…
Review: ‘The Penelopiad’ by Margaret Atwood
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars “In Homer’s account in The Odyssey, Penelope – wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy – is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, her story a salutary lesson through the…
Literary Fiction Review: ‘The Song of Achilles’ by Madeline Miller
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars Greece in the age of Heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the kingdom of Phthia. Here he is nobody, just another unwanted boy living in the shadow of King Peleus…
Literary Fiction Review: ‘The Vanishing Act’ by Mette Jakobsen
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars This is a story about a snow-covered island you won’t find on any map.It’s the story of a girl, Minou. A year ago, her mother walked out into the rain and never came back.…
Literary Fiction Review: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood
Synopsis courtesy of GoodReads Rating: 5 out of 5 starsThis is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate ‘Handmaids’ under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding…