Since I don’t want to be a total Debbie Downer about this book, I’m going to start with a positive. Ten years after first attempting to do so, I have finally ploughed my way through all 13 books on the Man Booker Prize Longlist. Some years I didn’t bother to try (mostly years when Hilary Mantel was on the list) and other years I’ve lost interest or had such a bad book experience with one of the novels that I’ve abandoned it. But, spurred on […]
The Disappointing Disappointment
I’ve loved Barbara Vine for like ever. I know she doesn’t exist and is in fact Ruth Rendell, but still. It’s an irony that I have not now nor have I ever had any desire to read a Rendell novel. Vine first showed up on my radar when A Fatal Inversion was televised for the BBC way back in time before the hula hoop. Okay, it was like 1992 or something but still, I’m old, alright? Anyway, I read the book of that, then burned my way […]
Just What Kind of Fake Psychic Are You?
Ah, Linwood Barclay. As I have documented on previous reviews, I loved him, then I nearly broke up with him, and then with Trust Your Eyes, he won my heart all over again. This short sharp little story first appeared as a novella titled Clouded Vision, which was published for the Quick Reads initiative. Barclay has expanded the original novella into a fully fledged novel (though still short, at just 270 pages), though as I haven’t read the original, I can’t do a compare and contrast. Barclay brings back […]
Well, I was told you’d be profound
I admit, a good 90% of the reason I wanted to read this book was the title. It’s a genius, a masterstroke in fact. But ultimately it turned out to be, if not quite the high point of the book, it was certainly one of the very few noteworthy moments. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed this, but when something is described as “wry, hilarious and profoundly genuine” and has a gushing jacket quote from A.M. Homes, well, you’re setting the bar terribly high […]
A more accurate title would have been Uninteresting
And so we reach the penultimate book in my apparently neverending Booker Prize Longlist challenge of 2013. Apparently, it’s a “much anticipated” new novel, which I’m sure is the case for those of us who have read MacLeod’s previous novels and knew this one was coming out. As it is, I was blissfully unaware of either, but the subject of this novel was very much up my alley, so to speak. Set in 1940, it focuses on a maddeningly middle class family, the Beaumonts. Geoffrey […]
Who were the homestead wives, who were the gold rush brides?
In which Popcultureboy is left floored by and in awe of Catton’s supreme mastery and skill as a writer and storyteller, but is ultimately forced to conclude he found the novel easier to admire than to love. So here we are at the pinnacle of the Booker challenge for 2013, with the winning book. There were some firsts with this book lifting the Booker, as it was the longest ever book to do so with the highest page count (Catton is 28, and the book […]
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