You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
He is ready to talk about her, his daughter. He is ready in a way. In a way. When a teenage girl dies in a car accident while returning home from school, her father is left to deal with his grief. Sent home from work for the crime of showing his emotions in front of strangers, he cannot bring himself to utter his unspoken thoughts of guilt and blame – not even to his wife. Alienated from the world and, to some degree, his own mind, and with his marriage slowly collapsing, the man starts to consider his loss. In lyrical prose, Ami Rao experiments with language to explore grief, one of the most complex of human emotions. Inspired by the essays of Roland Barthes, this fragmented and philosophical novella is deeply moving.
Modern-day New York, a subway train: David, an American-Jewish jazz musician, torn between his dreams and his parents' expectations, sees a woman across the car. Ameena, a British-Pakistani artist who left Manchester to escape the pressure from her conservative family, sees David. When a moment of sublime beauty occurs unexpectedly, the two connect, moved by their shared experience. From this flows a love that it appears will triumph above all. But as David and Ameena navigate their relationship, their ambitions and the city they love, they discover the external world is not so easy to keep at bay. Ami Rao's masterful debut novel picks apart the lives of two people, stripping them of their collective identities and, in doing so, facing up to the challenge of today: can love give us the freedom to accept our differences?
None
Kit is waiting expectantly for life to begin. Orphaned as a young child, he recoils from his adoptive parents’ mundane existence, drawn instead to the bohemian world of his Uncle Col and Col’s charismatic wife Marianne. Amid the permissive atmosphere of Erringby, Marianne’s rambling family mansion, Kit becomes increasingly obsessed with his aunt. One debauched summer, the eighteen-year-old Kit wakes to find himself in bed with Marianne. But what happened? And who is his sudden mysterious benefactor? As Kit grapples with the ramifications of that night, he, Marianne and Col find their lives spiralling out of control. Unfolding against the changing cultural landscape of the seventies, eighties and nineties, Erringby is a captivating coming-of-age novel with echoes of Great Expectations.
**WINNER OF THE GENERAL OUTSTANDING SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017** Coping with your own death, when you are not yet dead, is a strange thing... A natural on a horse since he was able to walk, and imbued with a pure love of riding, Declan Murphy became one of the most brilliant jockeys of his generation before his world came crashing down at the final hurdle of a race at Haydock Park. His skull shattered in twelve places, he was believed to be dead, the last rites were read and the Racing Post prepared his obituary. Miraculously, and the word is not used lightly, he survived and defied medical thinking in recovering to the ext...
There’s no such thing as a perfect family. A perfect life. A perfect man. Frank is proof of this. He’s everyman and yet as unique as a fingerprint. With a wonderful wife and children who are the loves of his life, he couldn’t ask for anything more. But time and time again he keeps risking it all. In snapshots through time, Only About Love takes a sweeping loop around Frank’s life as he navigates courtship, marriage, fatherhood and illness. Told through the perspectives of Frank and his family, this story is one of intense honesty about the things we do to those closest to us.
Postal worker Jenny’s life is in the doldrums. Her daughter is all grown up and ready to face the world, her marriage is falling apart, and now her best friend and colleague tells her he plans to retire. So, when a postcard from Australia, begging the recipient for forgiveness but marked ‘insufficient address’, lands on her sorting table, she does the unthinkable – she slips it up her sleeve, with the intention of delivering it herself. Jenny sets off on a journey around the Isle of Wight, determined to find the recipient, and with the help of the locals she hopes to reunite the long-lost lovers. Will she be able to give them the happy ending she didn’t allow herself to have? Set against the backdrop of the strikes in the 1980s, Missing Words is a heart-warming story about self-discovery, the power of family ties, and the strength needed to face whatever life throws your way.