The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

Author	William Corlett
ISBN	0349107750

A beautifully realised story of the heady joys of first love, and the fallout of it too. Christopher Metcalfe narrates chapters of his life that alternate between Now, while he's in his late 40's, living a buttoned-up, closet life following the death of his father, and Then, as a 16 year old at a boys' boarding...

Author	Jane Gardam
ISBN	0349102260

What is truly amazing about this book is how all the different pieces hold together! I would say that this is what characterizes Gardam’s books.

We are given a complicated puzzle that is begging to be solved. For people who love solving puzzles or mysteries, it is a must read.

When...

Author	A.L. Kennedy
ISBN	0224077864

Ms Kennedy should have a category of her own with different coloured stars, or the option to have the stars squared, 3D at the very least. She's a writer who expects a lot of her reader, and I like that. The opening chapter of this novel is a struggle, even the second time round it's not a smooth ride, no familiar...

Author	David Lodge
ISBN	0140057463

This 1980 novel by Lodge (whom you may have noticed I've been reading a lot of and enjoying this year) follows a group of young English Catholics over a period of about 20 years, enabling us to see the ways their religion affects their lives (and their lives affect their religion), particularly in the shadow...

Author

Joan Brady

"[A] vivid historical novel--part poignant biographical fiction, part raw frontier epic."
TIME
Taking flight from an extraordinary real-life family history, here is a riveting novel of how the past lives on, generation after generation. THEORY OF WAR is the richly imagined story of one...

Author	Nicholas Mosley
ISBN	1564782425

-- A sweeping, comprehensive epic, Hopeful Monsters tells the story of the love affair between Max, an English student of physics and biology, and Eleanor, a German Jewess and political radical. Together and apart, Max and Eleanor participate in the great political and intellectual movements which...

Author	Patrick Neate
ISBN	0802140564

This rich and epic novel is written with each chapter a phrase of a twelve bar blues structure, each of the different pieces of the harmonic progression coordinating with a different storyline.

The book begins with a Prologue set in the mythical Afican kingdom of Zimindo in 1790, where two young...

Author	Lindsay Clarke
ISBN	0449001180

I read this last December and enjoyed it immensely. It had been recommended to me twenty years ago, and finally I have been able to get to it. I could easily give it five stars, but then I would be only thinking of myself. Truth is, Clarke is a bit verbose for some tastes. And though I prefer more minimalist,...

Author	Jennifer Johnston
ISBN	0140106987

4★
This begins as a light-hearted, affectionate look at a young girl growing up in Ireland in 1920, after the end of WW1, but her childish, secret adventure turns serious and shows the dark divisions in Ireland.

Nancy was orphaned very young and has been raised in a friendly, loving household...

Author	Paul Theroux
ISBN	0140050728

World-famous photographer Maude Coffin Pratt has pointed her lens at the beautiful, obscure, and obscene, and at the private places and public parts of the famous, from Gertrude Stein to Graham Greene. When the seventy-year-old Maude rummages through her archives in preparation for a triumphant...

Author	Beryl Bainbridge
ISBN	0349116113

"He almost took the wrong turning at the next roundabout. Muriel remained silent but pointed a contemptuous finger, at the last moment, in the correct direction"

Its that little clause at the last moment that captures the delight of this odd awkward story. The awkwardness is not of the writing,...

Author	William Trevor
ISBN	0140047182

CONTAINS SPOILERS

The main character comes across at first as a special ed kid, but as the story evolves we see that he is truly mentally disturbed. He’s an older teenager who is cast aside by his family. He has no father and his mother and older sister are good buddies, laughing, smoking, eating...

Author	William McIlvanney
ISBN	0340407573

His face made a fist at the world. The twined remnant of umbilicus projected vulnerably. Hands, feet and prick. He had come equipped for the job.

Newborn Conn Docherty, raw as a fresh wound, lies between his parents in their tenement room, with no birthright but a life's labour in the pits of his...

Author	Susan Hill
ISBN	0140040722

Francis Croft, the greatest poet of his age, was mad. His world was a nightmare of internal furies and haunting poetic vision. Harvey Lawson watched and protected him until his final suicide. From his solitary old age Harvey writes this brief account of their twenty years together and then burns all...

Author	Peter J. Conradi
ISBN	0393048756

In "Iris Murdoch," Peter Conradi assesses the remarkable intellectual and cultural legacy of the celebrated philosopher and beloved novelist. Depicting her personal life in extraordinary detail -- her student days at Oxford, her Communist activities, her early affairs, and her enduring marriage...

Author	A.S. Byatt
ISBN	0684835037

From the author of The New York Times bestseller Possession, comes a highly acclaimed novel which captures in brilliant detail the life of one extended English family--and illuminates the choices they must make between domesticity and ambition, life and art. Toni Morrison, author of Beloved, writes...

Author	Ben Jonson
ISBN	0393900401

New Mermaids are modernized and fully-annotated editions of classic English plays. Each volume includes:

� The playtext, in modern spelling, edited to the highest bibliographical and textual standards
� Textual notes recording significant changes to the copytext and variant...

Author	Caroline Blackwood
ISBN	1590170067

Corrigan is at once a mordant comedy of manners and a very modern morality play. Since her husband's death, the increasingly frail Mrs. Blunt has had only her trips to his grave to look forward to. Her raucous housekeeper's conversation, and cooking, are best forgotten. Nadine, her daughter, is an infrequent,...

Author	Ann Quin
ISBN	1564782794

A poetic book of voices, landscapes and the passing of time, Ann Quin's finely wrought novel reflects the multiple meanings of the very word "passages." Two characters move through the book--a woman in search of her brother, and her lover (a masculine reflection of herself) in search of himself. The...

Author	Raphael Selbourne
ISBN	0955647673

Beauty - in both name and appearance - is a twenty-year-old Bangladeshi, back in
England having disgraced her family by fleeing an abusive arranged marriage. Forced onto
the jobseeker's treadmill and under extreme domestic pressure, she cracks and runs away.
Her encounters with officialdom,...

Author

Mary Jo Bang

Mary Jo Bang's fifth collection, Elegy, chronicles the year following the death of her son. By weaving the particulars of her own loss into a tapestry that also contains the elements common to all losses, Bang creates something far larger than a mere lament. Continually in search of an adequate metaphor...

Author	John Marston
ISBN	1854596969

The strength of this play is in the language, not the plot or charcaterisation or dramatic tension (although to be fair one should make judgements about plays which one has only read with caution: Shakespeare's comedies tend to look tame in print). The Malcontent closely parallels Tourneur's (if it...

Author	John Bayley
ISBN	0715628488

It is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. Maybe this is because it is about the great novelist Iris. It is so beautifully written. One could almost feel the lived life of the couple, and notice that Bayley has shown immense love, reserve, and kindness toward his beloved.

It...

Author	Elizabeth Jane Howard
ISBN	0330332015

In Artemis Cooper's recently published (2016) biography of Elizabeth Jane Howard, she says The Beautiful Visit "grew out of the unhappiness of Jane's first marriage, and it asks the questions that were preoccupying her then. How do women find a place in the world if they are brought up unprepared and...