Book Review – Midwinter by Fiona Melrose It is the onslaught of the literary festival season here, and as a result, I have a unusually large pile of books to…
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Book Review – Days Without End by Sebastian Barry Steven Boykey Sidley I have always had a irrational distaste for books written entirely in a deep vernacular, not…
Book Review – The Nix by Nathan Hill Steven Boykey Sidley Every year I try to read at least one door stop. 500 pages or more. The last few years…
One of the genres I generally avoid is the childhood memoir of trauma and pain. Not because it doesn’t interest me, but because of the grinding repetitiveness of abusive, neglectful,…
E.L. Doctorow died yesterday. As a teenager, I had been happily snacking my way through fine mid-level fiction from Alex Haley and James Michener when I stumbled upon Doctorow’s Ragtime….
There was a time in my life when I was a programmer. Or software engineer, in more current parlance. This career in which I laboured during my young adulthood came…
A couple of years ago my wife, writer Kate Sidley, had a humour column in a monthly health magazine. Each month she mined the great steaming petri-dish of gyms and…
Book Review – The Children Act by Ian McEwan I have a rocky relationship with McEwan’s work. I liked Atonement. I loved Amsterdam. I rhapsodised to the point of obsession…
Book review – Us by David Nicholls As part of my slow and faltering journey through the Booker longlist I waded into this book with a considerable amount of curiosity….
Book review – The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis This is a difficult book for me to review. Firstly, I am a hopeless Amis groupie. I can think of…