Book Club

Normal People by Sally Rooney review by Stephen Kearney   How do we get to hear about a new publication, film or television series?  There’s probably a thousand and one answers but for the most part, at least in my case, the first awareness just seems to appear...

MAMA'S LAST HUG I'm halfway through this book, and it is moving. The Bible gave humans dominion over the earth, while in recent times we have had Science putting us at the top of the evolutionary tree - same difference, really. Mama's Last Hug, written by a long-time...

James O’Brien Review (replaying the tapes) by Stephen Kearney “One thing about you” said a friend of long – very long – standing “is that you reflect, or as you’d put it, you replay the tapes.” How Not To Be Wrong, James O’Brien’s 2020 work,  is a master class in...

This is the author’s only published novel.  The publisher, Martin Breese, who was a very good friend of mine, tried to encourage Clive Linklater to write more novels, without success.  The author steadfastly refused, which is something of a pity.  Clive actually owned...

Review by Stephen Kearney “An empty taxi pulled up outside ten Downing Street” ran the joke of the time “and Clement Attlee got out”. Orwell called him “a dead fish”. A chapter of this very biography is entitled “Few thought he was even a starter.” So embarrassed was...

At the  X-ray conference, Tim our regular radiologist was back from holiday, but not noceably refreshed by the break.  His increasing irritability had a comedic zest to it.  He struggled to conceal his contemot for the overinvestigation by us physicians, and cagey,...

THE KINGDOM OF WOMEN The Mosuo, who live in a remote part of western China, have a matrilineal social structure. Their ways are being rapidly superseded as modern China moves in: they have become a tourist attraction. The author has lived with the Mosuo part-time for...

The book opens in a rather macabre fashion with a lone assassin killing the main characters parents and older sister.  The 18 month old child escapes from his cot and wanders down stairs and out of the front door unbeknown to the knife wielding assassin.  Bod, as he...

Looking for America by Ian Mutch (first published 2001) review by Stephen Kearney   The Independent newspaper, in its obituary on Lord Denning, a one time powerful legal progressive who later went to seed in the mindless bog of English nationalism, mourned of his...