The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay First with your head and then with your heart . . . So says Hoppie Groenwald, boxing champion, to a seven-year-old boy who dreams of being the welterweight champion of the world. For the young Peekay, it is a piece of advice Read more…
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them bigger than a matchbox: Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in his great uncle Iggie’s Tokyo apartment. When he later inherited the ‘netsuke’, they unlocked a story far larger Read more…
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.” From its haunting first line to its famous closer, “Reader, I married him”, Charlotte Brontë takes her audience by the throat with a fierce narrative of great immediacy. Jane Eyre’s voice on the page Read more…
We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler Rosemary is now an only child, but she used to have a sister the same age as her, and an older brother. Both are now gone – vanished from her life. “I wanted you to have an extraordinary life,” confesses Rosemary’s Read more…
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014 Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family Read more…
Dombey & Son by Charles Dickens Mr Dombey is a man obsessed with his firm. His son is groomed from birth to take his place within it, despite his visionary eccentricity and declining health. But Dombey also has a daughter, whose unfailing love for her father goes unreturned. ‘Girls’ said Read more…
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd The struggle of 19th-century abolitionist and women’s rights pioneer Sarah Grimké is at the heart of Sue Monk Kidd’s powerful new historical novel. Set – like her bestselling debut, The Secret Life of Bees – in the American deep south, where she Read more…
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is more to life than his humble home and his flock. One day he finds the courage to follow his dreams into distant lands, each step galvanised by the knowledge that Read more…
The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch Review by Amanda Read Charles Arrowby retires from life in the theatre to seclusion in a barely-habitable residence by the sea. He intends to write his memoirs but life has a habit of interrupting. His dreams of a rural-maritime idyll, where he can Read more…
Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes Catherine has been enjoying the single life for long enough to know a good catch when she sees one. Gorgeous, charismatic, spontaneous – Lee seems almost too perfect to be true. And her friends clearly agree, as each in turn falls under his Read more…