Arnold Bennett, Riceyman Steps Grosset & Dunlap (1923) My experience with Arnold Bennett's fiction can be easily summed up: The Old Wives' Tale (1908). But what I lack in experience, I make up for in enthusiasm: I loved that novel. I was expecting it to be old-fashioned, dreary and a
Joan Barfoot's Dancing in the Dark Macmillan, 1982 (not the image shown) When I re-read Abra earlier this month, I mentioned that it felt both quiet and revolutionary at the same time. The narrator's self-discovery is relayed through the filter of memory, and the bulk of the action is internal,
I didn't read Joshua Ferris' first novel, which might set me apart from the majority of people who turned to The Unnamed expecting Then We Came to the End, Part Two. So I could not possibly be disappointed on that score. I chose The Unnamed because I knew it considered
Monique Roffey's The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (Simon & Schuster, 2009) I was pleased to see that more than half of the Orange Prize shortlisted titles -- including this novel -- were still unread in my stacks. Reading the longlist was a crazy undertaking (see more talk of
Sadie Jones' Small Wars Knopf, 2009 All three of 2010's Orange Prize nominees discussed here already (Lorrie Moore's At the Gate of the Stairs, M.J. Hyland's This is How, Rebecca Gowers' The Twisted Heart) were relatively quick reads for me. Sadie Jones' Small Wars? It took me a full week
