Book Reviews
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We feature one book per month in this place of prominence. Older reviews can be found by scrolling down the page and clicking on the appropriate writer’s name
Stephen Kearney – Book Review – September 2021 – How Not to be Wrong – The Art of changing Your Mind
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...
Paul Pickering – Book Review – August 2021 – Reflections From a Bookshop Window
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...
Stephen Kearney – Book Review – July 2021 – Citizen Clem
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...
Laurence Hattersley – Book Review – June 2021 – The Ministry of Bodies
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,...
Barry Goddard – Book Review- May 2021 – The Kingdom Of Women
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 Their ways are being rapidly superseded as modern China moves in: they have become a tourist attraction.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...
Paul Pickering – Book Review – April 2021 – The Graveyard Book
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...
Stephen Kearney – Book Review – March 2021 – Looking for America
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...
Barry Goddard – Book Review- February – Human Kind
HUMAN KIND: A PRONOID MANIFESTO The subtitle is mine. But, it seems, they really are out to be nice to you! We have been raised with the idea that civilisation is only a veneer, and that without the forces of law and order we would quickly revert to barbarism. Witness...
Stephen Kearney – Book Review – Jan 2021 – Singapore Burning
Singapore Burning Heroism and Surrender in World War II By Colin Smith Published by Penguin Viking 2005 Review by Stephen Kearney 2013 (reviewed 2020) Historical Background Singapore is a small island roughly 22 X 14 miles located at the southern tip of the...
Stephen Kearney – Book Review – December 2020 – The Railway Man
The Railway Man by Eric Lomax review by Stephen Kearney One of the things that gives life its magic is the accidental, the freak, the one off, the random, the whole process of being in the right place at the right time or, alternately, the wrong place at the wrong...
