October | 2025 | Somewhere Boy
4 posts published by Gareth during October 2025| Somewhere Boy
I’ve been meaning to read Simonetta Perkins since … when? Certainly since I read The Ambassadors last year. (I read a big Henry James novel! I’m so grown-up, I can’t stop telling everyone.) Hartley was nearly 30 when this slim volume came out, and it was the first piece of fiction of any appreciable length … … Continue reading →| Somewhere Boy
Here’s a book I’d never have encountered, let alone read, if not for this project: Bread Givers by the Polish-American writer Anzia Yezierska (1880-1970). That’s despite the fact that it ticks a lot of my boxes. Stories of New York Jewish immigrant life are one of my great weaknesses. But I’d never heard of Yezierska, … … Continue reading →| Somewhere Boy
I’ve meant to read John Dos Passos for years, in particular his trilogy U.S.A. Perhaps this shorter novel might act as a gateway to the doorstop. Anyway, it didn’t take long for me to fall for Manhattan Transfer. It happened round about paragraph one. Three gulls wheel above the broken boxes, orangerinds, spoiled cabbage heads … … Continue reading →| Somewhere Boy
My previous experience of David Garnett extended to one book, but what a book! namely his 1922 novella Lady into Fox. Surely no other work of his could measure up, but we had The Sailor’s Return in the library and I was keen to try it. It’s June 1858, and William Targett has returned to … … Continue reading →| Somewhere Boy
I’m currently a quarter of the way into Thomas Mann’s 1,500-page biblical epic Joseph and His Brothers, and an excursion into the theology of 1925 while I was in the zone felt a good idea. Bruce Fairchild Barton’s The Man Nobody Knows, says the Wikipedia, is ‘one of the best-selling non-fiction books of the 20th … … Continue reading →| Somewhere Boy
Is it 1925 Club season already? Thanks to Simon and Karen as ever for what will be a stimulating and (on this blog, at any rate) occasionally weird week. One reason I wanted to read Virginia Woolf&…| Somewhere Boy
I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long. Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ is the source of one of the less […]| Somewhere Boy
My previous experience of the Indian writer R.K. Narayan was a mostly successful read of his comic novel Mr Sampath – The Printer of Malgudi some years ago. Narayan’s best-known works are set…| Somewhere Boy
What did I know of A.J. Cronin before reading this book? I had read one novel of his some years ago, The Spanish Gardener, an offshoot of a minor Dirk Bogarde fixation chronicled elsewhere. I knew he was the man behind Dr Finlay’s Casebook (still a cultural touchstone in comedy shows of my youth, though […]| Somewhere Boy
Campus novels! Aren’t they great? I say that, but my personal history with them is the dictionary definition of patchy. Most of the ones I can think of (Tom Sharpe, Lucky Jim, White Noise) I’ve either actively disliked or have zero memory of. I think I’ve had the most luck with American ones. I know […]| Somewhere Boy
