Blame My Shelf

I read a book recently that was discussing alcohol, and essentially discussing what excessive looks like. According to this novelist, if you drink beyond three glasses of wine or thereabouts a sitting, or lose a level of control over yourself, or do not have a full recollection the next day, more than occasionally – you should book a GP appointment. Whilst this is probably true according to NHS and health body guidelines, I do believe that this is not representative of many people’s University experience or the duration of a stereotypical British person’s twenties (or thirties…or forties). If your experience and opinion towards alcohol looks similar to those guidelines, I do not think you will enjoy, or perhaps understand, this book. Our eyes of the novel are Laura, on the very edge of her twenties and entering her thirties throughout the novel. An aspiring writer who has worked a string of different unfulfilling jobs, she is the antithesis of her classical musician fiancé, Jim

Incredibly charming. It really was. However…it was charming in the same way that I find Disney’s new releases of actor led classics. If you were to watch the films, they are undeniably delightful, but ultimately you are aware of how Cinderella ends before it even begins. The tale follows Anthony Peardew, a now ageing man who in his youth lost his fiancée tragically the same day he lost her keepsake, and from there on he harbours all lost items he finds with the intention to reunite the objects with their owners. On Anthony’s death this task is passed on to his housekeeper Laura, a woman whose age is potentially alluded to too often,   who takes on the task with the aid of Freddy the gardener and Sunshine, a teenage local girl with down syndrome. With a sprinkling of ghostly happenings and Sunshine’s ghostly intuition, the novel of course reaches a happy ever after. The narrative is interwoven with stories explaining the history of the lost objects. First of all, the most char

The Last Act of Love is one of those books that followed me around, as some do from time to time. When scrolling online for books to read I came across it from recommendations. Later, I saw it highly recommended in a couple of magazines, and it further plagued me in my Amazon basket. I then came across it in a charity shop, but reminded myself of the dark and sobering themes and put it back, but a few weeks later I bought it and set aside a few hours so that I could stop the haunting. For those unfamiliar with the book, it is written by Cathy - in 1990, her brother is involved in a hit and run car accident, and we follow the family from desperately wishing for his survival, to years trying to get him out of an unconscious state. Undoubtedly, Rentzenbrink can write. To me, she has a clear writing style that I could pick out in a line up, probably months after having read this. In my opinion, her writing style is cathartic, almost calm – the line between factual and emotion

This is another book that was not as simple as my predictions. The blurb discusses a woman who leads a simple, monotonous and empty 9-5 and compensates with a vodka fuelled weekend. From this, I assumed that this would be an ‘Animals’ esque, heavy drinking novel, with Lena Dunham style characterisation. I assumed that the protagonist would overcome her demons by finding something more meaningful in life (and in predictable fashion; a boyfriend to sew it all up nicely). A fraction of this assumption was correct, although it is more comparable to The Rosie Project than the sordid encounters of the beautiful people in Skins. However – charming Skins is not, and Eleanor Oliphant certainly does possess charm. In opposition of being drug and party fuelled, Eleanor’s life is charged only by loneliness, and Honeyman creates the interesting angle of what it is like to be young and lonely, something seldom explored. Essentially, Eleanor witnesses the fall of an elderly man, and her ass

Deliciously scary, the novel revolves around 15 year old Annie, the daughter of a serial killer of children, as she is settling into her new life living with psychologist Mike, his wife Saskia and daughter Phoebe, with the pseudonym Milly. A competent misfit, Milly is bullied at school and the tyranny doesn’t stop when she gets home, with jealous and temperamental Phoebe exerting power over what is to her, a never ending line of foster siblings. Land is cleverly suggestive, and does well not to be too graphic as she drip feeds us information regarding her mother’s crimes, which increases the tension and horror. Similarly, the unreliable narrator technique is expertly deployed as she carefully and expertly explores the relationship between mother and child, and what happens when that relationship is black, perverse, dark and withered. It explores the genetic element in addition to psychological – was Milly born bad, made bad, or bad at all? There is suggestive foreshadowing throug

A completely varied assortment of books that I have read recently; between a gothic horror, an account of organic dairy farming and a book about forensics and what we can tell from the types of flies found on the deceased, at least it cannot be said that my taste is limited. The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell This antiquated yet chilling novel follows pregnant and widowed Elsie as she travels back to her spouse’s family estate in the 1860s to live with the housekeeper and untrained servants, who hold Elsie and her companion, Sarah, with thinly veiled contempt. Throughout, the novel switches between the present in a mental hospital with Elsie, the violent prisoner who slowly begins telling the story to her new doctor, and between Elsie living at The Bridge, and further, to her husband’s late relatives in the 1630s. It transpires that Rupert’s predecessors, in an attempt to entertain an upcoming Royal visit to The Bridge, purchased optical illusion wooden boards, which b

Perhaps I have not been around long enough to know that this genre of book has always been written, or perhaps I am right and the memoirs with scatterings of collected pieces of writing, whether that be recipes or poetry or lists, have become increasingly popular recently. However I feel that Everything I Know About Love, is a really good example of one, the best I have read. It does not have the political awareness and social comment that Lena Dunham and Caitlin Moran’s counterparts do, and it is not as self-absorbed or career orientated as “celebrity” books of this genre can be. Thereby making it an easy read, easily engorged in a day or two. Dolly Alderton, a journalist and previous Made in Chelsea producer chronicles the disaster that is most people’s twenties. There is plenty here to relate to, especially if you are of a certain age, such as heart-break, soul crushing and cringe inducing first dates, MSN messenger, and general drunken debauchery. It is true to the time-

Frustratingly, sometimes you will finish a book and be left with a myriad of questions to mull over. Even more frustratingly, is His Bloody Project , which has left me with more questions than I dare to count, and a will to read it all over again, doubting my read of the entire novel and searching online for Macrae’s address in order to demand a few answers. The concept is simple yet interesting. In 1869 seventeen year old Roderick ‘Roddy’ Macrae committed a triple homicide in the Highlands where he and has family had worked agriculturally. It is not to ruin the reading of the novel by revealing this, as it is made known from the start. The story is told through several mediums, commencing with testimony of witnesses, the memoirs from Roddy, then through the perspective of a psychologist at the time through to documentation of the trial and newspaper accounts. Throughout the novel you discover the hardships of croft life (“there are no other ships for us”) the starvatio

As many others have, I have been considering starting a blog for many years, and now is as good a time as any to start the plunge. There is no ulterior motive - I don't imagine this will make me millions, or a household name in the slightest, but I have been looking for an outlet for all things literary for too long. I am 21 years old and live on the South Coast of England. I am an aspiring solicitor, and the main hobby I have to speak of throughout my life has always been reading. As many an avid reader can testify, we were the children whose parents threatened to take away our light bulbs because we were reading, far into the night, and I have this to blame for my over flowing bookcases to date. Other hobbies, including running, cooking, baking and languages are always much more of a 'task' to me than picking a new volume out from a book shop or nestling down with an old favourite. Ultimately, I believe one day that I would like to write my own books, however this is