Tag: Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: The Lying Tongue by Andrew Wilson (2007) & Nina Todd Has Gone by Lesley Glaister (2007)

Laura Hird has launched the latest issue of her New Review site, and it includes a double-header review from me. It was my idea to put the two together, as I thought they made an interesting comparison: both have a pair of protagonists whose inner  identities are not what they present to the outside world.

Andrew Wilson’s The Lying Tongue sees an art history graduate travel to Venice to become housekeeper for a reclusive novelist, who turns out to have  a dark secret in his past — but so does the graduate. This is Wilson’s first novel, and it’s good, but not quite there yet.

More accomplished is Nina Todd Has Gone, Lesley Glaister’s eleventh novel, in which a woman convicted of murder — and now rehabilitated into the community with a new identity — is pursued unknowingly by the brother of the girl she killed. It’s a better book than Wilson’s, because the emtions are more complex — but you’ll see what I mean when you read the review.

Read the review in full

BOOK REVIEW: Ideomancer, December 2008 (Vol. 7, Issue 4)

Now up at The Fix: my review of the December 2008 issue of Ideomancer. Includes escaping chickens, gods at war in the playground, a factory with a gruesome purpose, a princess with a secret life, the android equivalent of an urban legend, and more besides. And I enjoyed all of it.

Links:
Review
Ideomancer

BOOK REVIEW: Couch by Benjamin Parzybok (2008)

Now online at The Zone is my review of Couch by Benjamin Parzybok, a novel from Small Beer Press. It’s the odd little tale of three guys carrying their couch to somewhere new — but they don’t know where, because the couch itself seems to be guiding them. It gets 3 stars from me, because I liked it, but it never really caught fire in the way I hoped it would.

Here’s the review.

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