Men Don’t Cry by Faïza Guène wittily charts Mourad Chennoun’s coming of age. He’s a young twenty-something navigating the complexities of being born to traditional Algerian immigrants in modern France. They live in Nice, where his father dedicates time to…
Toni Morrison’s Beloved is another classic that has taken me a while to come to. Why? As with many revered books, that is a question with a very long answer! Beloved is obviously in a league all it’s own. I…
Mr Loverman was a perfect start to reading this year. Very entertaining, mischievous genuinely funny and so easy to read. Barry is a very dapper 74 old Antiguan who lives in Hackney with his church- devoted wife Carmel. His wife…
Things I Have Witheld by Kei Miller Sometimes while reading this book, I did find myself in awe. I have been impressed with Kei Miller’s writing before but Things I have Witheld is a completely different avenue from his fiction.…
The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg Italian Fiction translated to English by Frances Frenaye The Dry Heart contains an incredible amount of emotional chaos with so much measure. A chaos so well merged with the mundane that it becomes routine.…
It took a while to settle my thoughts on it! This is undoubtedly a brilliant debut but I didn’t like how it made me feel. I’m becoming too sensitive. A pandemic and two lockdowns will do that to ya. There…
I loved My Brilliant Friend, it’s so beautifully written. The story telling feels like it’s from the heart without a care for what is expected. It feels like Ferrante is just telling a story how she wants to- that is…
I loved reading People From My Neighbourhood. I’ve never read anything by Hiromi Kawakami before and found this very clever and off-beat. ‘Delightful’ isn’t a word I use a lot but the brief, colourful stories made me smile- even laugh…
From #BlackLivesMatter To Black Liberation rejects any false ideas of post-racialism with purposeful conclusions from the start. It invites you to think because an important question is being asked: Where do we go from here? I’ve got too much to…