Books

Every so often, and it’s not as often as you might think, a book comes along with an inspired premise so out there and yet so of its time, that you marvel at how someone managed to come up with such an original and insightful idea, one that casts a Continue Reading

Two of my absolute favourite books from the hellmouth of a year that was 2020 were The Phlebotomist by Chris Panatier and Captain Moxley and the Embers of Empire by Dan Hanks. Apart the books being engrossing reads that told their stories superbly well and with great imagination and intelligence Continue Reading

It’s hard to say whether it’s an unwillingness to face up to the stark realities of someone dying and the deleterious effect that has on the living left behind or a desperate need to delusionally convince ourselves that life is lot more happy than it actually is, but grief is Continue Reading

If you have ever suspected that humanity is a pawn in some great galactic game of brinkmanship, then you will love the very idea of a book like the superlatively good A History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel. In this tightly told story, which brims with as much Continue Reading

Grief is debilitating no matter what form it comes from; but it is even more damaging to your emotional and mental wellbeing and to the overall forward momentum of your life when it arrives with a slew of question marks hanging over its harrowing arrival. One person who knows this Continue Reading

Returning to spend time with a literary character you love is always fraught with a little bit of trepidation. Much like catching up again with someone with whom you really hit it off, there’s always this nagging worry that the magic won’t be there in quite the same way as Continue Reading

It is pretty accepted by many people these days that the old idea that the evolutionary path for humanity isn’t as idealistically rosy as it once was. Much of that idealism had its roots in postwar optimism, the kind that existed almost because it had to in the wake of Continue Reading

No one likes to think they are going to get to near the end of their lives and be buried under a mountain of simmering regret. What we all want is to march into the latter decades of our life, head held high, heart full and a list of flawless Continue Reading

Mix wit and whimsy with hard emotional truth is not the easiest of literary alchemies but Barry Divola manages it near-flawlessly with his debut novel, Driving Stevie Fracasso. Promising one of those revelatory road trip adventures where fun is had but epiphanies, both existential and familial are thick on the Continue Reading

Life, we have all sagely observed at one point or another, does not come with a great many, if any, guarantees. One of the few things we can all agree is relatively set in stone is how we were raised and how that upbringing shaped who we are as adults Continue Reading