'Tomorrow' - Graham Swift

Not sure when I first read this, but this second read an impressive, immersive, total delight. Told by a mother lying awake in bed, beside her sleeping husband, contemplating the information they have decided now is the time to pass to their twins, just past their sixteenth birthday. Much of the basic facts are guessable, but it is the intricacies and warmth of relationships, the diversions and the myriad possibilities of the consequences that adds quality and kept me reading. Truly a masterclass of novel writing.

Karen Campbell - 'After the Fire'

I've just put my life on hold in order to finish reading this.

Heart-gripping, throat-aching, peer through my metaphorical fingers in the hope that justice will be seen to be done - and the undeniable fear that it won't be, because these folk are real and happy endings not guaranteed.

Karen Campbell does suspense like nobody else and I get high on her writing. Wow. (And thank goodness I've two more yet to read.)


Karen Campbell
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6635236-after-the-fire

Sarah Hall - Goodreads review

Haweswater by Sarah Hall

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Strictly speaking I would have awarded half a star less, but for its strength and ability to ensnare me it deserved the extra.
I'd come to this after several well-writ, fast-paced, dialogue-heavy detective novels; the slow and rich descriptions took some adjusting to but the strength of the characters and of the developing love affair was irresistible, the inevitability of the end compelling, the pain real. Superb.

I picked up, from a charity shop in Sedbergh, Hall's 'How to paint a dead man' (How could I not!) and was enthralled;  this is the third one of hers I have read, all very different, but equally vividly, addictively-written.


View all my reviews