Limehaven features in Readers’ Lives top five picks
Thanks to poet and community arts activist Elaine Cusack for featuring Limehaven as one her top five books in May's Readers' Lives column for the Journal's Culture magazine. Reviewing Limehaven, Elaine wrote: "It's the best debut collection I've read in…
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
To celebrate the recent BBC adaptation of this wonderful book, I'm republishing a review I wrote some years ago. If you didn't see the series — or even if you did — read the book! A sumptuous tale of magic…
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
What if you could taste the emotions of the person who made your food? A few days before her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein bites into a piece of chocolate lemon cake and tastes her cheery mother’s despair. It is a…
Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle
I overdid it this winter. Hunkered down. Feasted. Forgot to move. A whiff of spring and I’m waking up. My body craves soup, my heart, simple nourishment. No doorstep sandwiches or difficult novels for me. I’m writing haiku and reading…
What it is by Linda Barry
I received a gift. A mysterious parcel in the post. I knew it was coming, but not what it was, nor when it would arrive. I waited by the letterbox like an eager terrier. I wanted to know what this…
Rebecca’s Tale by Sally Beauman
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” So begins Rebecca’s Tale, echoing Daphne du Maurier’s haunting romantic thriller Rebecca. Twenty years has passed since Rebecca de Winter drowned off the coast of Cornwall. Now a different dreamer is…
The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean by David Almond
Billy Dean is a boy, locked in a room for the first thirteen years of his life. He emerges into a broken and beautiful world. The butcher, Mr McCaufrey, shows him how to use a knife. Mrs Malone encourages him…