Author Archives: raprideaux

Andrew O’Hagan: Mayflies, p/b, London, Faber, 2020   Glasgow born Andrew O’Hagan has won applause in Britain and the United States for his thoughtful, engaging and edgy writing. Mayflies is a book about male friendships in two parts. Part 1 … Continue reading →

Marcel Proust: In Search of Lost Time: Volume 2, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower,  Trans. with Introduction and Notes, James Grieve, p/b, Camberwell, Penguin, 2003 (orig.1919) In Volume 2 of Proust’s epic seven volume In Search of … Continue reading →

Heather Rose: Bruny, p/b, Crows Nest, Allen & Unwin, 2019 New novel by prize-winning Tasmanian author Heather Rose who did well with The Museum of Modern Love in 2017. Bruny is  set on Bruny Island  in South east Tasmania in … Continue reading →

Rebecca Solnit: A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in   Disaster, p/b, Camberwell, Penguin, 2010 US Activist journalist, historian and writer has written extensively on feminism, landscape, art and politics. The middle of a Covid19 pandemic … Continue reading →

Francis Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden, p/b, London, Scholastic, 2015 (1911)   Burnett was English born but grew up and published in the USA. The Secret Garden was  not a great success at first but has become an absolute favourite … Continue reading →

BOOKS READ MAY 2020  John Buchan: The Thirty-Nine Steps, p/b, Camberwell, Penguin, 2005 (1915)  Scot John Buchan became one of England’s favourite sons, achieving Greats at Oxford as well as the Newdigate Prize for poetry and graduating in law and … Continue reading →

John Le Carré: Agent Running in the Field,p/b, London, Viking/Penguin, 2019  David John Moore Cornwell, more commonly known as John Le Carré is 90 years old and has written at lease 25 novels pretty much all in the espionage/intelligence genre. … Continue reading →

An Easter Exercise for isolated thinkers during the Corona Virus from the book: John Dickson: If I Were God, I’d Make myself Clearer: Searching for Clarity in a World Full of Claims, p/b, Kingsford, Matthias Media, 2002 John Dickson is … Continue reading →

Ann Patchett: The Dutch House, p/b, London, Bloomsbury, 2019 American bookseller, journalist and influential author Ann Patchett’s eleventh novel has a House as its central character! The Dutch House is an ecclectic,  over-engineered and richly furnished mansion in a quiet … Continue reading →