I thoroughly enjoyed Straub’s debut novel, Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, and feel we should gloss over the embarrassingly long time it took me to clock that she is daughter of Peter Straub. So when The Vacationers came along and seemed to be setting itself up to be everything Seating Arrangements should have been but wasn’t, I was sold. The blurb tells you it’s “an irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family’s two-week stay in Mallorca” […]
Just what kind of thriller writer are you?
I love a good thriller. Anyone who’s been reading my reviews since I started Cannonballing will have noticed that I’m a bit partial to a Sophie Hannah here, a Val McDermid there. So this much talked about debut from Paula Daly, with its intriguing tagline of “Your friend’s child is missing. It’s your fault” seemed right up my street. So it’s a shame it ended up leaving me flat. Our put upon heroine is Lisa Kallisto. Living in the quiet Lake District, she’s a working […]
Bring It On was never like this….
I have mentioned before how I’ll happily read books where I am FULLY aware I am really not said book’s target market. It’s been a while since I wandered so far outside of my demographic as I have here with this story of cheerleaders, rivalry and Generally Bad Goings-On. But Abbott has garnered acclaim for her YA as well her non-YA novels, a few of which I’m also interested in reading. And who among us watched Bring It On and thought “yeah, I bet it’s not really […]
Made for Music
I have been a musician for thirty years. I sing and play a variety of instruments. I’m the kind of person who can pick up just about any instrument and have a basic capability to play within a few minutes. I have never felt like less of a musician than when I read this book. It’s not that it shows me to be technically insufficient but that he tells of a world of music which I can never hope to experience. As all of Sacks’ […]
The Twelve Dancing Princesses, circa 1920
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club is a reimagining of the fairy tale The Twelve Dancing Princesses set in 1920s New York city. It features twelve lovely and lively sisters, their miserly and evil king-like father, speak easies, bootleggers and flappers. The girls’ mother has died and dad, disappointed in having no male heir, has kept his girls imprisoned their entire lives in the upstairs of their Fifth Avenue house. Mr. Hamilton is a shrewd businessman but terrible father. Oldest daughter Jo, in order to […]
“But screw your courage to the sticking-place”
It seems like Philippa Palfrey has everything–a scholarship to Cambridge (or Oxford, I can’t remember which), comfortably-off parents, health and beauty–but she feels that there’s a part of her selfhood missing. She’s always known she was adopted, but not who her birthparents were, or why she has very little memory before the age of eight. She sets out to find the answers, and discovers a legacy of blood and horrible crime. Meanwhile, Norman Scase is a milquetoastish middle-aged, verging on elderly, man, who made a deathbed promise […]
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