Books, Reviews and Emma Lennox

Evie Wyld - After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

18 Aug 2009

(Jonathan Cape) After the Fire, A Still Small Voice suffers from the same problem as its title; too long and too obscure. Evie Wyld, a graduate from a creative writing Masters in London, sets her début novel in the wide open spaces of her native…

CE Morgan - All The Living

19 Mar 2009

RURAL DRAMA Focused on the life of young country girl, Aloma, All the Living is a melancholy depiction of love and family in an oddly timeless and isolated Kentucky farm. CE Morgan’s prose avoids grand descriptions that may befit the epic mountain…

Duncan Sarkies - Two Little Boys

5 Feb 2009

BLACK COMEDY Flight of the Conchords fans will take delight in this dark, twisted and idiotically funny novel from fellow Kiwi Duncan Sarkies, a sometime writer on that show. When the feckless Nige knocks down a Norwegian backpacker, he calls his…

Tobias Hill - The Hidden

8 Jan 2009

MYSTERY DRAMA Uncovering the mystery of Tobias Hill’s new Greek-set novel is as slow and meticulous as the archaeological dig at its centre. Hill revels in detail: historical descriptions of mysterious Sparta, moments from a memory best forgotten…

Gillian Slovo - Black Orchids

13 Nov 2008

Evelyn wishes to be ‘rescued from the boredom of her life’ and it’s in Emil, the beneficiary of a rich Ceylon family, that she finds her non-white knight in shining armour. What seems like an exotic fairy tale in 40s Ceylon, however, is an altogether…

Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain

4 Sep 2008

Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain (Granta) Balti Britain is a comprehensive and startling exploration into how Britain and India have shaped each other's fates. Ziauddin Sardar, an academic and cultural commentator, admits to his own ignorance of…

Chris Cleave - The Other Hand

14 Aug 2008

SOCIAL DRAMA (Sceptre) After the success of his 2005 debut novel The Incendiary, Chris Cleave turns his attention from terrorist attacks to the equally provocative issue of immigration. Written as a first person narrative, The Other Hand describes the…

Mark Watson - Crap at the Environment

5 Jun 2008

POLITICAL COMEDY (Hodder & Stoughton) When reducing your carbon footprint, the first thing to do is admit that you’re crap at the environment. This is according to stand-up comedian, writer, TV personality and one-man iceberg melter Mark Watson, who…

Doug Johnstone - The Ossians

13 Mar 2008

ROCK’N’ROLL DRAMA (Viking) Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll is the old cliché but Doug Johnstone gives it new definition in this young-indie-band-on-the-road fictional travelogue. Naming themselves after an invented Scottish mythmaker, The Ossians have high…

Bernhard Schlink - Homecoming

Weidenfeld & Nicolson

31 Jan 2008

A scrap of pulp fiction marks the beginning of a life-long journey for Peter Debauer in this personal account of a fatherless boy in postwar Germany. The fiction, which describes a soldier’s return, has mysterious parallels with Debauer’s own life and…

Oliver Sacks - Musicophilia

29 Nov 2007

MUSIC ANALYSIS Musicophilia (Picador) Listening to music is something most of us take for granted; millions of commuters can’t even go on a bus ride without hundreds of songs in their pockets, but what’s really happening when we lodge those…