Jura, April 1947. It was his third day back on the island but the first he had managed to get out of bed. He knew what he had to do: transfer to paper the ceaseless, grinding monologue that had bee…| This Reading Life
“That braw lanky laddie,” the woman in the upper-deck first-class saloon said, squinting and hitching herself forward in her chaise lounge for a better view. Her white summer dress tick…| This Reading Life
Epigraphs (3): (1) I very rarely think either of my past or my future, but the moment that one contemplates writing an autobiography…one is forced to regard oneself as an entity carried along…| This Reading Life
It was hard not to feel that Paris was the place. My response to The Paris Bookseller has been complicated. I was keen to read it thanks to the blurb which told me it had a Paris setting, a booksho…| This Reading Life
His mother waited upstairs while the servants took coats and scarves and hats from the guests. Some books are not easy to review. If you had asked me a couple of month ago, I would have said, unres…| This Reading Life
Kathy O’Shaughnessy has written an utterly delightful and immersive story about the extraordinary Marian Lewes, otherwise known as George Eliot. The book follows Marian from the early days of…| This Reading Life
A couple of months ago I was fortunate enough to receive a reading copy of Jane Caro’s Accidental Feminists from Melbourne University Publishing. I immediately tucked it into my weekend bag t…| This Reading Life
I knew next to nothing about the mother/daughter Mary Wollstonecraft/Shelley pair until reading Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. I had started read…| This Reading Life
7 December 1962, Devon 7 REASONS NOT TO DIE: 1. Skin. To never again feel the skin of one’s beloved child. Not another fictionalised biography I hear you cry! One day I will work out why I am…| This Reading Life
Blackboards chalked ‘Positions Vacant’ hang against the wall. She feels like she has walked all morning to get here. She hurries past loiterers with worn faces and sagging hats. They sp…| This Reading Life
