Archives by Tag '1970′s'
Review: ‘The Sack of Bath’ by Adam Fergusson
I really enjoy being a member of the various online book communities that I’m a part of, much as they are largely responsible for my enormous TBR pile and wishlist. I know I can find opinions on everything from the latest popular bestseller to obscure novels which I’d never have discovered on my own on [...]
Review: ‘Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons’ by Gerald Durrell
Evidently I was feeling in an avian mood when I read this book, as I followed Patrick Suskind’s with another book featuring pigeons: this time it was by Gerald Durrell. Not deliberate, I swear. Gerald Durrell is one of my favourite authors to turn to when I want to read something entertaining and well-written but [...]
Review: ‘Fireworks’ by Angela Carter
Title: Author: Angela Carter Published: Penguin, 1987, pp. 133. Originally published 1974 Genre: Short stories Blurb: In each of these mesmerising tales is a search for heightened sensitivity. Reality is left behind. Filtering ordinary experience through her hallucinatory imagination, Angela Carter exposes the subterranean desires and obsessive fears lurking in the unconscious. Her characters are [...]
Review: ‘Crash’ by J. G. Ballard
Title: Crash Author: J. G. Ballard Published: Vintage, 2004, pp. 224 Genre: General fiction Blurb: In this hallucinatory novel, the car provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a ‘TV scientist’, experiments with erotic attrocities among crash victims, each more sinister than the last. Ultimately, he craves a union of blood, semen and engine coolant [...]
Review: ‘Sophia Scrooby Preserved’ by Martha Bacon
Title: Sophia Scrooby Preserved Author: Martha Bacon Published: Puffin Books, 1971, pp. 220 Genre: Children’s historical fiction Blurb: ‘My little panther’, Nono’s father called her, but he didn’t get the chance to say it for long. Her African village was destroyed and she first lived in the bush then was sold as a slave, given [...]
Review: ‘Lady Oracle’ by Margaret Atwood
Title: Lady Oracle Author: Margaret Atwood Published: Virago Press, 1990, pp. 345 Genre: General fiction Blurb: From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband, from writer of romances to distinguished poet — Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple [...]
Review: ‘The Stone Book Quartet’ by Alan Garner
The four books which make up this volume were first published individually. “As the stories grow into one story, so one’s awareness of the emblems and symbols deepens! Garner binds the reader to him and he shows us the author working with language to make his book as his characters worked with stone and iron. [...]
Review: ‘Interview with the Vampire’ by Anne Rice
This is the book that started it all. We are in a small room with the vampire, face to face, as he speaks–as he pours out the hypnotic, shocking, moving, and erotically charged confessions of his first two hundred years as one of the living dead. (Goodreads Summary) I read this book hoping for a [...]