Finding connections between great books
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Pride and Prejudice is the greatest novel ever written. So I spent the last month reading variations, from a vampiric Mr. Darcy to voodoo and murder, with much romance along the way. This is what I discovered.
It started with Bridgerton. Well, it actually started with the January ’21 lockdown, which resulted in a Netflix binge, and then I inhaled the Bridgerton books from Daphne through to…
I read Cat Marnell’s drug-addict-magazine-beauty-editor memoir How To Murder Your Life over the weekend, and its resemblance with Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation was so resounding…
Soon after my father died, my very young son put away all the ‘sad books’. These were the picture books that choked me during the bedtime routine with their depictions of love, loss and yearning.
My memoir companion pieces are Viv Albertine’s Clothes, Music, Boys, Laura Sage’s Bad Blood and Maggie O’Farrell’s I am, I am, I am.
Kurt Vonnegut’s If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? is a slim collection of his speeches at school and university graduations. At the heart is the premise, adopted from his Uncle,…
I rediscovered Good Evening, Mrs Craven just before Christmas, and through happenstance was given Jan Struther’s Mrs Miniver not once, but twice for Christmas. The two are perfect bedfellows.
Does every reader go through a Mitford phase? There is a heady combination of ‘upper classishness’, political extremism, rebellion and style in their lives and writing. Unity is in…
Companion Pieces 