Reviewing novels, short stories, plays and non fiction.
Eileen is a 2015 novel by Ottessa Moshfegh. The novel is a memoir of the past, retelling Eileen’s last week in a freezing, miserable Massachusetts town, in the 1960s. It also functions as a rich and disturbing character study.
Continue reading “Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh – Review”
Evil Under the Sun, by Agatha Christie, is another Poirot novel, published in 1941. Poirot attempts a pleasant summer holiday in Devon, and once again encounters love, lust and evil at a classic seaside resort hotel.
The premise is a similar but better version of Triangle at Rhodes. Its TV adaptation is my second favourite of the series, after Death on the Nile.
In Death on the Nile, by Agatha Christie, yet another of Poirot’s holidays is disrupted by murder, mystery, intrigue, jealousy and romance. This classic murder mystery detective story is set aboard a the Karnak steamer, exploring the darkness and beauty of the River Nile.
In Agatha Christie’s first published mystery, and the first Hercule Poirot novel, a brisk older woman, Mrs Inglethorp, has been murdered in Essex. Hastings has been invalided out of the army and decides to visit his old friend, John Cavendish, her stepson, at their country estate.
Continue reading “The Mysterious Affair At Styles by Agatha Christie”
At a cheap hotel in Mexico, defrocked priest Lawrence Shannon clashes with bawdy hotel owner Maxine Faulk, and meets a saintly seeming drifter and artist, Hannah Jelkes, travelling with her elderly grandfather. Fever, stormy weather and lust wrack this Southern Gothic play by Tennessee Williams.
Continue reading “Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams”
Altered States by Anita Brookner is a excellent novel of the ‘repressed, English, and unreliable’ genre perfected by authors like Kazuo Ishiguro. It follows solicitor Alan Sherwood, his failed marriage, his blended family and the object of his obsession.
This is the first time I’m reviewing a book I’m uncertain whether to recommend. The Passport is a slim novella by Nobel Prize Winner Herta Müller. I bought it at an antiques place, aged paper sandwiched between blue and white ceramic plates and tarnished hand saws. (spoilers)
Mask of the Plague Doctor is an interactive fiction text adventure by Peter Parrish, released under Choice of Games on the 23rd of April. You play as a doctor sent into the quarantined town of Thornback Hollow. Working with an army surgeon and an idealistic new medic, you have to work to eradicate the plague while unrest and religious conflict erupt in the town. And you’re on a time limit – if you can’t cure the disease, Baron Morlond waits outside the walls to purge the contagion by the sword.
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Help the Witch by Tom Cox is a collection of short stories and modern fables. It was published in 2018 and won a Shirley Jackson award. It was crowd funded through the site Unbound, to over 300% of it’s target.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Cadfael books by Ellis Peters (Edith Mary Pargeter OBE BEM). The Rose Rent is a classic. It is a medieval mystery novel set in the summer of 1142, as the battle between King Stephen and Empress Maud rages on. This is the thirteenth novel in The Cadfael Chronicles, first published in 1986. It charts a wealthy young widow who donates a house to the Abbey for a symbolic rent of a single white rose a year.
COPPER LANTERN BOOK REVIEWS 