by Wilkie Collins A Review Published in 1860, The Woman in White, in its language and style, is very much a novel of its time, adopting first person multiple narratives, melodrama and bizarre coincidences in its telling. It is a mystery thriller, almost gothic in tone, combining themes that resonate even today: the equality of …
Category: Writing and Publishing
Lucky Strike
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith In her second novel in the persona of Galbraith, JK Rowling's war hero detective Cormoran Strike takes on a case involving missing writer Owen Quine. Quine has written a novel entitled Bombyx Mori in which he seems to have maligned and slandered most of his colleagues in the book industry. …
Rich And Over Here
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James The Portrait of a Lady is one of those classics I always meant to read but never got around to it. It came up at last as essential reading on a lecture course on the English novel, so I felt obliged to tackle it. Though it has …
Möbius Lips
Thought I'd share this!
Welcome back, Lisbeth!
The Spider's Web I talk and write about books a lot, usually about books I have read. For this landmark post (it will be my 100th post on WordPress in my present incarnation), I'm going to talk about one I haven't read. In fact, it hasn't been published yet. Rumours of a new 'dragon tattoo' …
The Theory of Everything
Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking A few weeks ago, I went to see the award-winning James Marsh film, The Theory of Everything, with Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking and Felicity Jones as his wife, Jane. I don't know Stephen Hawking personally but have been an admirer of Hawking the scientist for a long time …
Gone to London to see the Queen!
The Heart of Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott 'On the day when the unhappy Porteous was expected to suffer the sentence of the law, the place of execution, extensive as it is, was crowded almost to suffocation.' Edinburgh 1737: Captain John Porteous, King's officer, is confined in the Tolbooth prison for firing on a crowd …
The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse
".... Connie lined up the scalpel and cut. At first, a gentle shifting, nothing more. Then the tip of the blade pierced the skin, and the point slipped in." Kate Mosse returns to her native Chichester for the setting of her new novel, The Taxidermist's Daughter. The year is 1912, a time of mackintoshes, umbrellas, …
Going Dutch
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton "The funeral is supposed to be a quiet affair, for the deceased had no friends. But words are water in Amsterdam, they flood your ears and set the rot, and the church's east corner is crowded." My daughter gave me The Miniaturist as a Christmas present and when I began …
Banks Don't Change!
A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett Banks and bankers are in the news a lot. Usually it's bad news: the directors and presidents get obscene bonuses; they manipulate the tax system; they crash and leave millions of people out of pocket. Rarely do the newspapers carry stories about the honest bankers and their shareholders - …
Magda Green Books 