A life in books » Susan Osborne

Andrew Miller occasionally sets his books in the present but excels at historical fiction whether that be the eighteenth century of my favourite Ingenious Pain or 1962/3, when Britain was in the ...

https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/11/the-land-in-winter-by-andrew-miller-a-distinctly-chilly-tale/

Five years ago, I reviewed Niall Williams’s This is Happiness which I very much enjoyed despite his somewhat florid writing style, very different from my preferred pared-back prose. A pleasing ...

https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/11/time-of-the-child-by-niall-williams-a-christmas-tale/

Perhaps the most famous recent fictionalisation of a life is Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell but I’ve chosen some less well known examples for this post. Below are five novels based on real l...

https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/11/five-fictionalisations-of-real-lives-ive-read/

Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six others to form a ...

https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/11/six-degrees-of-separation-intermezzo-to-good-day/

This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could. The son...

https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/11/blasts-from-the-past-port-mungo-by-patrick-mcgrath-2004/

I’d not come across Malachy Tallack before his second novel, That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz, popped up on NetGalley. Tallack’s a singer-songwriter as well as an established writer of books abo...

https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/10/that-beautiful-atlantic-waltz-by-malachy-tallack-never-too-late-to-change/

Lean pickings for November’s paperback preview although it begins with a novel heading for my books of 2024 list. Set in early 2020, Sigrid Nunez’s witty, erudite, wonderfully discursive The ...

https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/10/paperbacks-to-look-out-for-in-november-2024/

We’d had such a lovely time when we last visited Portugal, pre-pandemic, I suggested a Portuguese railway jaunt to H. Our plan was less ambitious than our Central European holidays with just th...

https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/10/fourteen-days-in-portugal-and-two-books/

November’s the month when publishers line up their big titles ready for Christmas, two of which I’ve included here, both from old favourites of mine, beginning with the one I’ve already rea...

https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/10/books-to-look-out-for-in-november-2024/

Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six others to form a ...

https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/10/six-degrees-of-separation-long-island-to-the-lodgers/

This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could. Thereâ€...

https://alifeinbooks.co.uk/2024/10/blasts-from-the-past-stones-from-the-river-by-ursula-hegi-1994/