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This is one of those books that I didn't want to end.  Turning the last page was like waving goodbye to family after they've been to stay for a while and now I sort of miss the Whitshanks. I'd forgotten that it was Anne Tyler who wrote The Accidental Tourist, which I loved, and now I am wondering why I've left it so long to pick up another book from Anne Tyler.  There's a real familiarity to the people in her books, and not only can I visualise them clearly, but I can sense the atmosphere around them.  In A Spool of Blue Thread, the Whitshanks are an established family living in a home that was built and occupied by Mr Whitshank's father.  This solid home with it's fine wooden porch is integral to the story of the family, and it many ways it represents who they are.  Mr Whitshank Senior originally built the house for another family, but during the construction he fell in love with it and had a sense that he would one day it would be his own. He was able to b...

With more twists than a bag of cough candy, this book will keep you wondering what's happening right to the last page.  It's a dark modern story told through a collection of letters and a few random documents and it tells the tale of a honeymoon that didn't go exactly to plan. The newly married couple, Richard and Evelyn had been gifted a honeymoon stay in a fashionable Turkish hotel by Richard's mother, and at first Evelyn thinks that her biggest problem is her interfering mother in law, but that pales into insignificance once they meet the beautiful Isabella who runs the hotel. The hotel has become something of a local landmark after an elderly couple staying as guests drowned in the sea the previous year.   Isabella tells Richard and Evelyn that the man was sleepwalking and left the room heading for the sea, then his wife ran in after him but they were both swept away by the current.  On the face of things, it is simply a tragic accident, but Evelyn is not sure th...

  This book is the third of three books I was given as Christmas presents and I saved this one until last as it is non-fiction and I didn't feel ready to tackle it just after Christmas. It's a biography of George Orwell and the main focus is the time he spent on the Outer Hebridean Island of Jura.  I must confess that I have only read one of Orwell's books as a set book at school, and I can't say I enjoyed it very much, so I never went on to read 1984 or any of his other works.  The style of writing here struck me as being more of a research paper than a mass market biography as the text is often supplemented with superscript numbers leading to endnotes, and those take up twelve pages at the back.  There are also plenty of quotes from books and letters used to support the narrative and this book is clearly aimed at students of Orwell and other literary types rather than casual readers.    Orwell was born in India in 1903 in the heyday of the British Empire ...

You know how it is when someone gives you a paperback as a gift; you are never sure if you are going to like it, and if it happens to be translated form Norwegian and have a title relating to The First world War, then there is every reason to have a few doubts. But my doubts quickly faded after I started this book and it wasn't long before I was absolutely glued to it and resented every task that took me away from the next chapter.  If someone had told me that this book had won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction I would have believed them, it's that good.  Why is the cover not plastered with little rosettes from Prize giving organisations?  Lars Mytting has won prizes for his non-fiction work but he deserves more - and Paul Russell Garrett deserves another prize for a translation that doesn't in any way feel like one. The story follows Edvard Hirifjell through his quest to discover what really happened back in 1971 when his parents were killed in an accident and he was report...

  Cast aside everything you think you know about fairies and prepare to slip into a world within our world.  Doreen Hopwood has created an entire mythical civilisation with its own complex society and territorial conflicts, that functions just beyond human reach, and is only accessible through closely guarded portals. The world of Sidhthean is broken into territories held by fairies, goblins, trolls and gnomes and the most powerful ruler is Queen Ceriddwen who controls access to the Four Gates which can be opened onto to the human world.  Her kingdom has been put under threat by Gwynn ap Nudd, King of the Goblins, who has already invaded the Anunnaki lands and killed the entire population there, including the Anunnaki dragon fairies and shapeshifting flower fairies.  Now that Ceriddwen's son, the Crown Prince Gwion is presumed dead, Gwynn ap Nudd is threatening the Land of the Four Gates, and if he gains control of the land, he intends to invade and conquer the human...

 I'm not really sure where to start with reviewing this book as it is complicated and disturbing and I think only a person who has suffered some kind of trauma themselves could have written it. It begins in the early 1960 where we meet Isabel who lives alone in a house in the Netherlands that her family came to when she was young.  Right from the start it is clear that Isabel has issues.  She is obsessive and doesn't enjoy any kind of social interaction although she does occasionally meet up with her two brothers and their partners.  Isabel is keeping the house exactly as her mother kept it and she has taken on some of her mother's mannerisms as a way of navigating through certain situations.  She employs a young girl to come and cook and clean for her but she offers no friendship to the girl who has to deal with Isabel constantly checking on her. It is very hard to like Isabel as she has a mean side to her and will deliberately say things to hurt other people....

  I picked this one up because I thought it was written by David Mitchell the actor and when I got home and looked at it properly I realised it wasn't the same Davis Mitchell and I was a bit disappointed.  However, that disappointment did not last very long as I only had to get a page or two in before I was totally absorbed in it. Black Swan Green is a fictional village in Worcestershire and home to young Jason who is thirteen and living comfortably among a group of friends who all go to the same secondary school.  The book is set in the early 1980s, which is close enough to the 1970s when I was at secondary school, for me to find everything very familiar.   Back then, no-one was very interested in the mental health of teenagers and bullying was largely accepted as a fact of life unless it tipped over into something really noticeable.  Jason has a stammer which he is able to conceal most of the time by swapping out difficult words for something else, but if...