by NRB | 4 May 2018 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I first read Anna Karenina in 1960. It was a set text in English I at the University of Melbourne. Like the swot I was, I read as many of the set texts as I could before embarking on the course, so I must have been a few months short of 18 at the time. I found the...
by NRB | 7 Jul 2017 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
This will be the last of my prison despatches – that is, columns to do with my two-months-plus time in hospital. Unlike some patients who are able to sit in their beds or on their chairs and stare at the walls or occupy themselves with television, I’d be crawling...
by NRB | 21 Feb 2017 | Fiction |
Gibbons’s parody is a masterpiece of comedy in its own right. Cold Comfort Farm was first published in 1932. Gibbons says at the beginning of the novel that it is set in the ‘near future’ though this only seems to manifest itself in television-phones and the...
by NRB | 26 Aug 2016 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
We lay under cover by the side of the road for the ambush and Paco passed me the wineskin which was heavy with the resin-tasting wine of that part of the country which feels good when it hits the back of your throat in a spurt but you must be careful to cut the spurt...
by NRB | 16 Jun 2016 | Fiction |
Sophisticated narrative layering and emotional insight make Wuthering Heights an extraordinary novel. I believe Wuthering Heights to be one of the best (if not the best) English novels of the 19th century, possibly ever. I’ve read it perhaps 20 times, taught it in...
by NRB | 4 Dec 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
To date this year I’ve read 16 books and listened to 28 audio books. Because I keep a record with a note on each book and assign each a mark out of 10 to assist me in this exercise, I’m easily able to list the five I ranked most highly. They appear here in the order I...
by NRB | 2 Oct 2015 | The Godfather: Peter Corris |
I first read Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) at school when it was a set text. I was very impressed by it, answered a question on it in the exams and got a good mark, although I’ve long forgotten what I wrote. At university, Hardy’s poems were set for...
by NRB | 23 Apr 2012 | Fiction, The Godfather: Peter Corris |
Recently I was asked to name five books that everyone should read. That old chestnut. I declined; people have such different tastes and read in such different ways that the idea makes no sense. I offered instead ‘five books I’m glad to have read’. This was accepted. I...
JUNE WRIGHT Mother Paul series. Reviewed by Karen Chisholm6 December 2024June Wright has faded from view, but in 1948 her novel Murder in the Telephone [ … ]
ANDREW O’HAGAN Caledonian Road. Reviewed by Catherine Pardey5 December 2024This new novel from the author of Mayflies is set in London, but Glasgow is [ … ]
IAIN RYAN The Dream. Reviewed by Ben Ford Smith3 December 2024Iain Ryan’s latest novel continues his fascination with 1980s Queensland and [ … ]
MARINA YUSZCZUK Thirst. Reviewed by Ann Skea28 November 2024Argentinian writer Marina Yuszczuk puts her twist on the vampire novel in [ … ]