Jane hopes that she doesn’t meet Richard Curtis anytime soon. If she did, she’d tell him exactly what she thinks of his movies. Especially if it were raining when they met. Because Jane notices when it rains in London. Jeez, does anyone not? Yes. Looking at you, Andie MacDowell! Jane doesn’t think that having Hugh Grant’s character, or any other man for…
Curated by book squirrels
“No luck, mate?” “Nah, they won’t let me in. Confiscated my membership card, then said I don’t belong. Gits.” “I tell you that Society place used to be alright, you know, but it’s gone downhill. It’s got so they’ll only let a certain sort in, yeah? I remember going there all the time when I was younger. ‘Course it’s changed…
Judith Kinghorn’s beautifully-written and evocative debut novel The Last Summer was one of my favourite reads of 2012. Which might help to explain why, on the eve of her second novel coming out, I’m only now getting around to trying to do it justice in a review. The Last Summer has been marketed as a book that viewers of Downton Abbey would…
I brought her back one last time. She liked the place, remembered it from her childhood, she said, or maybe when she was older, a teenager. I can’t remember. I glazed over every time she started to talk about the time before me. It can’t have been that interesting. She wasn’t. She weren’t much to look at neither. I can…
Days after seeing it, I am still thinking about Matthew Bourne’s magical interpretation of Sleeping Beauty. It wasn’t love at first sight but once the fairies made their entrance and started to bestow their gifts, I fell for it in all its gothic loveliness. From that moment on, I was transfixed and entranced, drawn into the enchanted forest and dazzled…
I heard women talking and tried to focus on what they were saying. “A most peculiar looking creature to be sure.” “Who is she, do you think?” “Foreign, of that there can be little doubt. It is not the fashion that a lady’s hair be cropped so close.” “And the clothes we found her in. Why! Little more than sacking.”…
I fill letters home with tales of a happier me: a young woman sitting in the shade on her balcony, trying to read a children’s book in Greek, and nodding “Kalimera” at the neighbour opposite, who is hanging out her washing and admiring our tomato plants. There’s no place for the flatmate tending to his marijuana plants strategically placed between…
When the first mist ribbon had snaked its way out of the forest and wrapped itself around their Saab on the road from Gothenburg, he understood how you could feel at home in a place for the first time in his life. Like being on one of those paths that only last for a limited time in fairy tales, before…
I’m thrilled to be part of the blog tour for Kerry Hudson’s debut novel Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma. Kerry was one of my early follows on Twitter and, having enjoyed her updates on writing, life and the cake essential to both of those, it’s especially lovely to help her celebrate her first novel…
For writers’ group this month we had ‘time capsule’ as our prompt and this got me looking around my office and thinking about what I would choose to put into one. In the end, I decided that I’d want to put in the one thing you can’t always hold onto – MEMORIES – but that can come back to you…