November 19, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Penguin Random House, £8.99, out now
Much has been made of the fact that this is Ali Smith’s “Brexit novel”, which in some ways is to do it a disservice. Because if, like me, the term “Brexit novel” makes you shudder internally and want to reach for the new Lee Childs instead, you’d be missing out on a fascinating entry which manages to look at our newly-divided Britain with a fresh eye.
The plot concerns the curious relationship between Elisabeth Demand, a precariously-employed “casual contract junior lecturer” visiting the town in which she grew up, and Daniel Gluck, her centenarian former neighbour who now lies dying in a hospice. But this is just the springboard from which Smith leads us through a whirlwind of dreams and memories, in tandem with her always-enjoyable day-to-day interactions deftly delivered with the usual eye for eccentricity.
And all this is of course set very much in the present, against the backdrop of the country’s historic decision to leave the EU. Working as she is in a medium where we’re used to clever allusions, parodies, fables and metaphors instead of approaching things head-on, there’s something almost illicitly exciting in the way she occasionally allows her asides about Brexit to be so on-the-nose, never shying away from directly addressing the matter at hand. This feels every inch a book written in the direct aftermath of the referendum, simultaneously angry, confused, ruminative, wounded and playful – which must be a very hard concoction to pull off as successfully as it is here.
At times it feels like Smith is examining this disorienting time in the same way that Gunter Grass so brilliantly tackled the incremental rise of Nazi Germany in The Tin Drum; by focusing alternately on scenes of domesticity, surreality and hard, painful truth.
And as in many of Smith’s novels, it’s somehow dreamlike yet relatable, like a glimpse inside a brain at once the same and totally different to your own. Written in the distinctly idiosyncratic prose – peppered with elastic quips, digressions through language and the occasional startling image – which has won her such a loyal fan-base, it’s no surprise that such a talented writer, wrestling with so seismic a period in our history, has turned out a piece of work as singular as this. Get it down you.
Review by Tom
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November 13, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Granta, £12.99, out now
Another week, another deeply unsettling novella. Tom Lee’s dream-like tale of suburban living gone awry would make a good companion piece to Matthew Weiner’s Heather, the Totality; but where that short novel felt very American in its evocation of a divided, gentrified New York, Lee’s is distinctly, queasily English, exploiting the tensions behind middle-class social mores.
Unremarkable family man James Orr wakes up one morning to discover he has contracted Bell’s Palsy, which has caused the left side of his face to droop unresponsively. In the hands of Lee, dealing with this plausible (if unlikely) malady becomes a Kafkaesque nightmare, as Orr – like the haplessly metamorphosed Gregor Samsa – tries his best to navigate his life and responsibilities in a world where he has been indelibly transformed.
Suddenly unable to work at his client-facing company, he is forced to confront the grim reality of days unmoored from any sort of routine. Meanwhile his unblemished cul-de-sac community of identical homes is under siege, as youths are using its quiet streets for sexual encounters in their cars. As head of the neighbourhood residents’ committee, James may have to do something – but his predicament is a doubly unfortunate one, as he finds that his face is sufficiently disabled that he often can’t speak or make himself understood.
Tough stuff for anyone to deal with; but like in any bad dream, an inexplicable edge begins to creep into our hero’s behaviour. As his visage is obscured so too are the motives behind his actions, and the unpredictability of the narrative as he becomes increasingly erratic makes for compelling reading.
This is a novel which utilizes its idyllic setting perfectly in a way that recalls Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby or The Stepford Wives, and the slow and innocuous way that an atmosphere of dread is built is remarkable. A quick, punchy read that stays with you long after the final page.
Review by Tom
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October 15, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Sort Of Books, £10.99, out now
One of the best book things ever has just happened to me. I discovered that the Moomin prose books are not the same stories as the Moomin comic strips. This means that there is a whole world of unknown Moomin that I can explore, and I can do it through the beautiful new hardback editions of four of the prose books just issued by Sort Of Books. This is the reader equivalent of buried treasure.
Moomintroll wakes up from his winter hibernation early, and is surrounded by his sleeping family. Feeling lonely, but also adventurous, he heads out to see what the winter world is like, and who he can find there. He makes new friends, and their insights are valuable: after Moomintroll and Too-ticky see the Northern Lights, Too-ticky notes, “I’m thinking about the aurora borealis. You can’t tell if it really does exist or if it just looks like existing. All things are so very uncertain, and that’s exactly what makes me feel reassured”. The gorgeous illustrations and fold out map (complete with Lonely Mountains and Grotto) complete the magic.
A long time fan of Jansson’s Summer Book, a novel for adults, I have found similar themes of kindness and adventure in her Moomin books (see Ali Smith on The Summer Book here – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jul/12/fiction.alismith). I agree absolutely with Philip Pullman when he writes: “Tove Jansson was a genius of a very subtle kind. These simple stories resonate with profound and complex emotions that are like nothing else in literature for children or adults”. I can vouch for the joy of reading them for the first time as an adult. These are books for every human. In case the books are not enough, I can also head to Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Tove Jansson exhibition (http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/2017/october/tove-jansson/).
There should be a word for the rare feeling that you get when reading a book that is new to you, but which you realise will be a favourite for the rest of your life. There isn’t one that I can think of, but this book would have occasioned it.
Review by Bethan
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September 11, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Portobello Books, £9.99, out now 
Marina’s parents have been killed in an accident, a trauma that she conceptualises through the sounds of the words used to break the news to her; “Your father died instantly and your mother died just now.”, as well as the smooth white lines of the car seat that she was looking at before the vehicle the family were in is fatally flipped over. The beauty of Barba’s novella, translated from Spanish by Lisa Dillman, is in these details, small horrors described in sentences that are allowed to luxuriate in the visceral heat of childhood, for instance when Marina wets herself after learning she will be sent to an orphanage, “She felt the hot, acidic urine run down her legs to her shoes and she felt the shame, which was also hot: a dark, robust, inescapable mass.”
When she gets to the orphanage accompanied by her doll, also Marina, we are introduced to the rest of the girls who live there. These children who Marina can’t distinguish between, are heard from in unison, Greek chorus style. To them Marina’s arrival is a disruption of their shared sense of self and through her they are shocked into the realisation that they are individuals. Their proceeding obsession with her is disturbing in its violence and sexuality.
The full and descriptive sentences in Such Small Hands are really the best thing about it, and they are particularly moving at the beginning, so much so that when I’d finished it, which I did quickly -it’s a short book, I went back and read the opening part again. A good one if you like books that describe the dark side of childhood or confusing experiences being richly explored through language.
Review by Cat
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September 7, 2017
by Team Riverside
Signed Hardback, Particular Books, £17.99, out now
Former Maccabees frontman Orlando Weeks has taken a surprising career-turn into bittersweet picture-books with The Gritterman, a beautifully illustrated and touching tale about a local gritter’s last night on duty.
Our unnamed hero takes us through his life and times in prose written with an understated, colloquial charm, discussing his work (ice cream man on summer days, gritterman on winter nights), late wife and private ruminations. His beloved night-time role consigned to the scrapheap by global warming and a terse letter from the council, he’s a man whose quiet profession – and way of life – is being extinguished by the relentless march of modernity.
Just as his faithful van putters along on its final mission, so he, an elderly man quite alone in the world, moves towards his ultimate destination. But while elegiac, The Gritterman is not depressing, instead finding a sweet triumphalism in a sad situation. As our narrator says; “Being alone and loneliness aren’t the same thing”.
All of this is paired with wonderful drawings by Weeks; and if lovely hand-drawn illustrations, sad scenarios and wintry landscapes are putting you in mind of Raymond Briggs, you wouldn’t be far wrong. Weeks’ melancholic, low-key style and domestic focus feel like a continuation of the kind of themes Briggs famously explored in works like The Snowman and Father Christmas, while his scratchy coloured pencil illustrations marked by subdued blues and flashes of colour recall The Snowman in particular.
But unlike Briggs’ work, this isn’t a comic, instead making use of the ample white space that a novel’s form allows to suggest isolation, and thick blankets of snow. And Weeks’ style is ultimately looser. The gritterman is rendered an incomplete ghost, fading fast; his world a foggy, unfocused one perpetually obscured by inclement weather.
It’s the little details in this book that make it shine, from the “dink on [his van’s] left wheel arch that’s the same shape as Scotland” to the turkey chow mein dinner our protagonist painstakingly prepares, a chunk of which he later removes from his molar with the corner of a Christmas card. Between them and the pictures you could pore over for hours, it’s the reading equivalent of what’s known as chrysalism; the intangible satisfaction of being snuggled up in bed while listening to a raging storm outside.
Review by Tom
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September 5, 2017
by Team Riverside
Excellent fiction, a good dose of feminism and fun children’s books make up our top 20 
from the last two months. In reverse order:
Jennifer Bell – The Smoking Hourglass
Jennifer Bell – The Crooked Sixpence
Noam Chomsky – Optimism over Despair
J K Rowling, John Tiffany, Jack Thorne – Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Emma Cline – The Girls
Matt Haig – How to Stop Time
Elizabeth Strout – My Name is Lucy Barton
Sam Bourne – To Kill the President
Paul Beatty – The Sellout
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – We should all be Feminists
Haruki Murakami – Desire (Vintage Minis)
Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale
David Szalay – All that Man Is
Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens
Deborah Levy – Hot Milk
Lisa Owens – Not Working
Zadie Smith – Swing Time
Colson Whitehead – The Underground Railroad
Naomi Alderman – The Power
… and at number one, we are proud to announce:
Peppa goes to London!
We predict that this month several new things will fly off the shelves – including Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir I am, I am, I am and John le Carré’s A Legacy of Spies.
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August 28, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Abrams, £10.99, out now
This is a very funny, smart and inspiring children’s picture book from the team that brought you Rosie Revere, Engineer.
Winner of the Little Rebels book award 2017 (see https://littlerebels.org/2017/06/25/ada-twist-scientist-is-the-2017-little-rebels-award-winner/), and a New York Times bestseller, Ada Twist, Scientist tells the story of a small girl who starts doing scientific experiments to get answers to the many important questions that occur to her. “’Zowie!’ said Ada, which got her to thinking:/’What is the source of that terrible stinking?’/’How does a nose know there’s something to smell?’/’And does it still stink if there’s no nose to tell?’”
Ada does indeed possess “all the traits of a great scientist”, and gains the support of her family and friends as she sets out to solve the wonderful mysteries of the world.
Beautiful illustrations complement the text perfectly, drawing out the humour and affection in the words (watch out for a slightly reluctant cat on most pages). This book has been instant hit with every adult and child I’ve bought it for, so far covering ages two to 69… One parent reported back that questions starting with “why…?” have now increased in number in their household after the example of Ada!
In a nice nod to important women in the history of science, a note in the back explains that Ada Marie is named for Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie. Buy it for kids and read it yourself.
Review by Bethan
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August 27, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Bloomsbury, £18.99, out now
If you turn over George Saunders’ first full-length novel, you’ll be bombarded by so many quotes on the back cover from writing titans that it might lead you to believe that he’s the literary equivalent of the second coming of Christ. Jonathan Franzen says we’re lucky to have him, Zadie Smith asserts that we’ll read him “long after these times have passed”, Thomas Pynchon, Khaled Hosseini, Jennifer Egan, Junot Díaz, Lorrie Moore and more besides all sing his praises.
And the wonderful thing is, they ain’t wrong. Saunders is a singular voice, a writer whose celebrated short stories have combined Pythonesque whimsy, incomprehensible corporate/new age jargon, deep existential ennui and a strong ethical conscience to create a style that is instantly recognisable and wonderfully original. His works are uniquely his own, as funny as they are often heart-breaking – you will laugh, you will cry – and his debut novel is thankfully no different.
A bizarre story – Abraham Lincoln’s deceased eleven-year-old son Willie tries to navigate a transitional stage of the afterlife known as the Bardo over one night of ghostly weirdness – is complemented by an equally bizarre form; when Saunders isn’t leading the plot through playscript-like dialogues narrated from within the Bardo he’s employing an even more remarkable narrative convention, that of telling the tale of the surviving Abraham Lincoln by amalgamating passages from (fictional) history books. This creates a procession of voices mostly many-times removed from the events they clamour to describe. It sounds odd, is odd, but is as wrong-footing and unexpectedly affecting as anything he has written.
It’s not often you read a book that feels as deliciously, daringly new as this. And the fact that, like Saunders’ short stories, it somehow feels casual, unpretentious and effortless just shows the extent of this fascinating author’s talent.
Review by Tom
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August 21, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Jonathan Cape, £16.99, out now
Rachel Cusk returns with Transit, the paperback of which will be arriving next month. As a taster, here’s our review of this distinctive and multifaceted novel.
Centred around a series of domestic vignettes, Cusk’s latest follows a narrator who goes not just unnamed for the majority of the novel but unremarked upon, an incisive and mysterious ghost whose duties around a London she has returned to in the wake of a divorce lead her to encounter a cast of old flames and new neighbours. Coldly, detachedly, she questions and interrogates those she meets, leading them into confessions that hold a mirror up to her own apprehensions.
The narrator (and very possibly Cusk’s alter ego) is an intriguing proposition – the kind of peculiar operator who sees fit to ask her hairdresser whether he thinks freeing oneself causes someone else to become imprisoned. She speaks almost entirely in the kind of searching philosophical inquiries that seem at odds with the workaday scenarios she inhabits, putting existentialist queries to friends and acquaintances, handymen and (of course) hairdressers; but it’s through the prism of her idiosyncrasy that these encounters are ultimately lent powerful meaning.
Whether it’s the builder whose failing health may jeopardise his career and livelihood or the ex-partner who appears so unchanged in the decades since their breakup that he may even be wearing the same shirt, much human frailty, eccentricity and beauty is on display here, dug up from beneath the surface mundanity by our guide’s relentless examinations. And, of course, there is the narrator herself; whose chilly, once-removed demeanour may well be reflecting how alone the newly-divorced mother feels in a world of couples, cliques and happy families. It’s a really interesting work, with a great deal to say about the human condition and much in it that readers will recognise about themselves.
Review by Tom
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August 5, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Pushkin Vertigo, £4.99, out now
The dying police inspector Barlach thinks that a surgeon practising in Switzerland may be a Nazi war criminal. He gets himself transferred from his friend’s hospital in Bern to the suspect’s institution, and a new kind of nightmare begins.
This superb and unusual mystery novel, first published in 1951/2, has been reprinted now by Pushkin Vertigo, an imprint republishing quality crime fiction of the 20th century. The publisher says Suspicion is “a genre-bending mystery recalling the work of Alain Robbe-Grillet and anticipating the postmodern fictions of Paul Auster and other contemporary neo-noir novelists.” (See https://www.pushkinpress.com/product/suspicion/). I found it easy to read, but it also engages with the highly challenging subject matter in a thoughtful and interesting way. Dürrenmatt is not afraid of taking an intellectual and moral stance, which is important when dealing with torture and crimes against humanity.
Suspicion is beautifully written and translated. Dürrenmatt was also a playwright, with The Physicists being his most famous work. Despite the subject matter, this book is a perfect short holiday or travel read, and I would particularly recommend it to fans of Simenon or Lionel Davidson. I have already ordered all the other Inspector Barlach books that I can find. A new addiction has been born.
Review by Bethan
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July 29, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Penguin Viking, £18.99, out now
The final part of Will Self’s modernist trilogy famous for its lack of paragraphs and preponderance of big words, Phone is more of the same; frequently frustrating, stubbornly literary and ultimately brilliant. Written again without paragraphs in his trademark run-on style, this is fiction that acce
lerates off the page as you read, in a torrent of euphemisms, witticisms and aphorisms.
It’s heady stuff. We’re constantly being uprooted, pulled from thought to thought, place to place, character to character and time to time without warning (and always mid-sentence). We spend spells in the brains of (among others) Zach Busner, an aging psychiatrist who’s equal parts OIiver Sacks and King Lear; a spy called the Butcher, who applies the tricks of his trade to night-time homosexual conquests; and Gawain, the closeted military man he seduces.
We’re completely submerged in each character’s psyche, hearing the songs they can’t get out of their heads, the reminiscences from forty years or four seconds ago, and even, in the case of the Butcher, the private mental conversations they have with their genitalia. Which means that as occasionally arduous as the act of following this cluttered and restless prose can be, it’s as near an analogue to actually being inside a person’s consciousness as I’ve ever read. To accurately depict the life of the mind is an astonishing feat, and Self nails it in laudable style.
Our author is really pushing the envelope here, and like similarly impenetrable works like Ulysses or Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy, Phone is incredibly rewarding once you’re knee-deep in it. Plus it’s really funny, which always helps.
Review by Tom
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July 22, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Walker Books, £7.99, out now
A gripping and highly relevant new YA novel, speaking to many of the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement. Starr sees her best friend Khalil shot by a police officer, and is instantly not only bereaved but at the centre of an explosive situation.
Starr is already in a difficult position: she’s not sure where she belongs, as a 16 year old living in a poor neighbourhood and attending an upmarket (mainly white) school. It’s a novel of political and romantic awakening, with a compelling storyline and believable teen and adult characters.
The only drawback for me was that it made me feel old – one of the teenagers is named after a band member from Jodeci, prompting other characters to comment that their very old (i.e. late 30s) parents also love this band! There are several moments of kindness, solidarity and humour in this very readable novel, which has won high praise from YA superstar John Green.
It is a US smash hit and a mind-expanding read, requested by several of our customers as soon as it was released, I expect this to be a hit in the bookshop this summer. A movie is due soon too.
Review by Bethan
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June 20, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Cornerstone, £18.99, out now
Commissario Brunetti, the senior Venetian police officer and star of Leon’s previous books, is sent to recuperate from stress in a secluded house on Sant’Erasmo, an island in Venice’s laguna. While there he makes friends with a local man. They spend days rowing in the laguna, tending to the man’s bees, and talking. But the bees start to die, and then his friend is found dead…
I have read many of the Brunetti books, and this is the best so far in my view. Set in Venice, the books are stuffed with spectacular surroundings, wonderful food, and chaotic corruption in public life. They are easy to read, and strangely addictive.
Brunetti wrestles with what is right when dealing with crimes, but also when dealing with the opaque and shifting concerns of the various authority figures he comes across, and as he addresses the other complexities of family and political life. I don’t always agree with the politics presented in the books, but I have a sneaking fondness for his arch and progressive wife Paula.
A previous winner of the prestigious Silver Dagger Crime Writing Award, Donna Leon has maintained both her popularity and the quality of her work over a long and impressive career. Ecological themes feature increasingly strongly in her work, as this interview makes clear, and this only adds to the relevance of her work (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/15/donna-leon-interview-commissario-brunetti-earthly-remains). Earthly Remains is a thoughtful, interesting summer read.
Review by Bethan
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May 28, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Harvill Secker, £16.99, Out now.
This is the second novel by the great French novelist, Laurent Binet. Those who read his first, critically acclaimed novel, HHhH (previously reviewed by Stuart for this blog in 2012 https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/hhhh-laurent-binet/), will instantly recognise his signature style of narrative intrusion that makes him one of the most exciting and inventive authors about today. Binet has again chosen to use a factual historical event as the starting point to his novel. HHhH was based on the plan to assassinate high-ranking Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich, the new novel, The 7th Function of Language, starts with the death of French critic and semiotician,
Roland Barthes. Binet blurs the lines between history and fiction in a really clever and often funny way, from the very first line he is questioning the nature of the novel as a form and how it relates to reality,“Life is not a novel. Or at least you would like to believe so.”
Roland Barthes was knocked down by a laundry van on his walk home on the 25th February 1980 and died from his injuries a month later, that bit is true. However, the death appears a bit more mysterious, as Barthes was on his way home from visiting the Socialist candidate for the French Presidency, Francois Mitterrand. But what if Barthes death wasn’t an accident? What if it was in fact an assassination? This is where the story turns into fiction, or at least speculation. In his hand he was holding a top-secret document that was stolen from him as he lay on the road. What did the document contain? Who Killed Roland Barthes? Superintendent Jacques Bayard is assigned the task of solving the mystery. He meets numerous French intellectuals who live rock-star-like existences in the clubs, bars and cafes of Paris. The story is fast paced and exciting and Binet’s style is a magical balance of being both really, really clever and super funny.
Review by Charlie
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April 17, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Pushkin Press, £10.99
Josephine and her husband Joseph have left behind unemployment, friends and family in the ‘hinterland’ for a new life in new city. They find dingy digs and uninspiring 
administrative jobs, and are just glad to be earning. We are with Josephine right from the start as she attends her job interview, and this sets the tone for the book: “The person who interviewed her had no face. Under other circumstances if the job market hadn’t been so bleak for so long – if the summer hadn’t been so hot and muggy – this might have discouraged Josephine from stepping through the door of that office in the first place”.
This short snappy novel deals with large life things. Fresh and interesting ideas about birth, death and relationships are delivered with great style, and the praise quote from Ursula K Le Guin on the jacket is both well-deserved and appropriate. I have found this book impossible to categorise, as is true of many of le Guin’s books. I also thought of Jose Saramago (particularly All the Names) and early Margaret Atwood (particularly The Edible Woman). But the book is wholly itself. Phillips manages to retain emotional impact despite sometimes bizarre goings on.
This would make a perfect ‘off the beaten track’ holiday book, being very readable and entertaining.
Review by Bethan
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March 18, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Scholastic, £6.99, out now
When a visiting toddler from next door goes missing, 12 year old Matthew tries to solve the case. He has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and spends a lot of time looking out of his window as it’s hard for him to leave his room… but can he start to overcome his illness and find out what has happened?
This is a convincing and engrossing mystery story which I’d recommend for older readers (if the reader is OK with a missing child storyline, I reckon they should be OK with the book). Excellent YA mysteries like Gene Kemp’s Juniper and Rosa Guy’s The Disappearance made me a mystery fan for life, and I think this book will do the same for readers now (another Juniper fan reviews it here – http://awfullybigreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/juniper-by-gene-kemp-reviewed-by-ellen.html). It’s a little slow to start but worth sticking with.
Goldfish Boy is also a kind and creative treatment of OCD, including how treatment works, and has received positive reviews from some people with OCD (see http://www.abeautifulchaos.co.uk/2016/12/the-goldfish-boy-mental-health-book.html). Thompson thanks OCD-UK for their help and the quality of her research and empathy show, particularly in her illustration of how OCD can affect families and the painful and distressing nature of the illness (http://www.ocduk.org/ocd). It has triggered comparisons with Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, and may find some readers in common. I can definitely recommend it anyone, adult or child, in search of an intriguing quick read.
Review by Bethan
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February 18, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Walker Books, £8.99, out now
“Badger Bill was having a very bad evening, maybe the worst of his whole life. He was stuck inside a bag. It was an extremely scratchy and horrible bag and it smelled as if someone who was also a badger had been crying inside it a few days earlier and then maybe after that had been sick”. So begins Bill’s scary but also very funny adventure, in a new children’s book from Riverside favourite A L Kennedy (see https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/serious-sweet-by-a-l-kennedy/).
Despite featuring four depressed llamas who also need rescuing by the unusual Uncle Shawn, this book is stuffed with kindness as well as proper laughs. If the reader can cope with the scary bits in Roald Dahl’s books, I think they can manage this: it’s recommended for age seven and up and everyone I know who has read it so far has loved it (three adults and one seven year old).
As well as being a proper adventure with quality baddies, the book is surprisingly comforting on the experiences of being anxious and scared, and also on showing courage in the face of these feelings. Gemma Correll’s illustrations are just as funny as the text (we sell her excellent cards in the shop too).
There is also a character called Ginalolobrigida Llama. Nuff said.
Review by Bethan
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January 31, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, £12.99 – Out Now
The fifth novel from the woefully underappreciated young British genius Gwendoline Riley might be her best one yet. First Love is narrated by Neve, a thirty-something writer who lives in London with her older husband Edwyn. As she combs over her past – friendships, courtships, hateships, love – and the choices that have borne her here, Neve paints a sentence-perfect picture of a testing literary life and a relationship that lurches queasily from cloying tenderness to wince-inducing cruelty. It’s a short but perfectly measured book in which every line pops and buzzes and sings. “Considering one’s life requires a horribly delicate determination, doesn’t it?” begins the novel’s blistering third and final act; “To get to the truth, the heart of the trouble.” This is urgent, gorgeously stylish, devastating new fiction that does just that: gets to the truth, and cuts to the heart. It’s a masterpiece.
Review by Stuart
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January 8, 2017
by Team Riverside
We’re quite impressed with the books we’ve sold this year… Among our top 30 were:
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – J K Rowling
The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins
My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante
The Vegetarian – Han Kang
The Sellout – Paul Beatty
All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
We Should all be Feminists – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
His Bloody Project – Graeme Macrae Burnet
How the Marquis Got His Coat Back – Neil Gaiman
The Little Book of Hygge – Meik Wiking
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics – Tim Marshall
The Green Road – Anne Enright
The Crooked Sixpence – Jennifer Bell
Number 11 – Jonathan Coe
Grief is the Thing with Feathers – Max Porter
Sweet Caress – William Boyd
The Silk Roads: a New History of the World – Peter Frankopan
The Dog Who Dared to Dream – Sun-mi Hwang
Trump and Me – Mark Singer
Politics and the English Language – George Orwell
Black Holes – the Reith Lectures – Stephen Hawking
Several of these are Team Riverside favourites so we’re feeling pretty chipper about it all. What will be the surprise hits of 2017?
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January 8, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, HarperCollins, £19.99, out now
First published in the 1970s, Lobel’s Frog and Toad short stories are remembered with affection by many children of that period, including me. I rediscovered them as an adult and found the kindness and gentle humour of the stories had stayed with me all that time. I have bought the books for early readers, adults, and many ages in between.
The collected stories are now available in a lovely collected hardback edition released last year, with a new foreword by Gruffalo author and huge Lobel fan Julia Donaldson. She notes that the books are “intended for beginner readers but also are great for parents to read aloud at bedtime. They are fables really, about endearing human weaknesses such as greed, self-consciousness, laziness and addiction to routine”.
Frog and Toad are best friends who face life’s small and larger challenges together. The characters are easy to relate to. In The Letter, Toad explains to Frog that the morning is “my sad time of day” when he always waits for the mail to come, even though he never gets any mail. Frog sits with him and they feel sad together. Frog then goes home and writes Toad a letter, which reads: “Dear Toad, I am glad that you are my best friend. Your best friend, Frog”. Toad is very pleased with this letter, although it doesn’t arrive for four days because Frog has given it to a snail to deliver.
The stories are children’s classics, especially in the US, but have a deeper cultural and personal significance as well (see http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/frog-and-toad-an-amphibious-celebration-of-same-sex-love).
We also stock the more portable paperback editions of the individual story collections. The engaging two-tone pictures complete the endearing quality of the book. A book to keep forever.
Review by Bethan
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December 14, 2016
by Team Riverside
Going fast, here they are:
Philippe Sands – East West Street
Alexandra Shulman – Inside Vogue
Alan Johnson – The Long and Winding Road
Sebastian Barry – Days Without End
Yuval Noah Hariri – Homo Deus
Thomas Hocknell – Life Assistance Agency
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November 30, 2016
by Team Riverside
By the same author as the classic I Want My Hat Back, this is a spare and beautiful picture book. It manages
to be extremely funny and also very thoughtful. It is perfect for reading aloud with young children, but is also an ideal gift for reflective adults.
Even the synopsis on the back of the book is a masterpiece: “Two turtles have found a hat. The hat looks good on both of them. But there are two turtles. And there is only one hat.” The scene is set for a tense drama, involving loyalty and the nature of reality. And a hat.
How many children’s books can you say would be ideal gifts to celebrate friendship, love, weddings and civil partnerships? Buy this book for yourself and read it many times over the rest of your life. An instant classic.
Review by Bethan
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November 5, 2016
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Faber and Faber, £10, out now
This is a very welcome collection of four new short stories from the much missed author of exceptional psychological crime mysteries. Val McDermid’s introduction commends James for taking us to places that are “dark, vicious and shocking. But always beautifully written”.
My favourite is the deeply menacing and highly believable A Very Commonplace Murder, which reminded me of a Shirley Jackson short story in its precise and convincing suburban horror. A man asks for a key to view a rental flat, and the house agent suspects he is not genuinely interested in renting it. The agent is right. “It was the first time he had been back since it all happened sixteen years ago. He came neither as a pilgrim nor a penitent. He had returned under some compulsion which he hadn’t even bothered to analyse”. And so we are compelled to find out what happened in this flat, and what this man’s relationship to it was.
I was glad to meet favourite detective Adam Dalgleish again in The Twelve Clues of Christmas.
In a lovely small hardback edition, this is great gift for fans of crime fiction, especially those who thought we’d never have another new thing from P D James to savour. If you’re buying one Christmas crime book this year, make it this one.
Review by Bethan
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November 1, 2016
by Team Riverside
New in – catch them before they go:
Susan Hill, The Travelling Bag
Eimear McBride, The Bohemians
Sebastian Barry, Days without End
Yuval Noah Hariri, Homo Deus
Paddy Ashdown, Game of Spies
Alan Johnson, The Long and Winding Road
Johnny Marr, Set the Boy Free
Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down
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October 18, 2016
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Jonathan Cape, £17.99, out now
Funny, angsty, unconventionally romantic… A L Kennedy’s Booker-longlisted novel is very readable. Meg is a bankrupt accountant, living in Lewisham, trying to stay sober and working for an animal sanctuary (there is an excellent dog in this book). Jon is a senior civil servant who hates his Government job and most of his colleagues. He is troubled by things he is asked to do but appears stuck. Both characters are trying to do their best in current day London, a city which can feel dangerous and uncaring. But will their separate stories collide during the 24 hours covered by the book, and if so how?
Serious Sweet feels completely current, and the frequent stabs of humour reflect Kennedy’s stand-up experience. There is enough bitterness to make the sweetness stand out. This is just what you’d expect from this thoughtful writer, who always engages fearlessly with contemporary concerns. I recommend reading the book at a gallop, to get the most out of the single day structure.
For collectors of London novels, this is a must-have. Wholly convincing instances of kindness to strangers, often on London’s public transport, are recounted. The unexpected village nook, Shepherd Market in Mayfair, is clearly inspirational for novelists at the moment, as it also stars in Francesca Kay’s excellent The Long Room (https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571322527-the-long-room.html). Kennedy also gives us the best description of the new London skyscrapers anywhere. It is possibly worth reading the whole book just for this.
I’ll always take a chance on reading A L Kennedy, author of the funniest short story I’ve ever read (The Mouseboks Family Dictionary, in her collection Now That You’re Back – http://www.a-l-kennedy.co.uk/book/now-that-youre-back/). It still makes my cry with laughter.
Life is not perfect, or sometimes even tolerable, but there can be more chances.
Review by Bethan
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September 7, 2016
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Contraband, £8.99, out now
This Booker-longlisted novel is the story of a 17 year old boy facing the death penalty for a triple murder committed in a remote village in the Scottish highlands. It is 1869, and Roderick Macrae is the son of a crofter who is living in a feudal society. His Bloody Project is presented like a true crime story, with an account by the killer of what happened and documents from other parties involved. The novel is introduced by the author, in his own name, suggesting that Roderick Macrae was a relative of his. You have to bring your brain to this collection of purported primary sources, and the main question you have to answer is not whether Macrae committed the crime, which he admits, but whether he was mad at the time. If it could be proved that he was insane, he might avoid the otherwise inevitable death penalty.
What has happened to Macrae that may have led to this point? Through his partial account we hear of brutality, unfairness, bereavement and extreme poverty. As a study in the abuse of power, and the impunity that goes with it, the book is excellent (to be more specific would be to risk spoilers). The language used by every character in the documents is evocative and convincing – for example, Macrae calls winter in the village the ‘black months’ and summer the ‘yellow months’.
His Bloody Project grips tighter and tighter as the pages run out. As we find out more about the murders and the killer, we inevitably think more about how we test whether a defendant was insane or not, an issue as present today as in 1869. Equally relevant now, is the question – when you are subject to the law but the law does not protect you when you need it, can the society you live in really be said to be based on the rule of law?
Review by Bethan
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August 20, 2016
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Mantle, £12.99, out now
For his second crime mystery novel, Celestin takes us to Jazz age Chicago. Louis Armstrong is transforming the cornet solo, and Al Capone largely owns the city, which is corrupt at every level. The novel opens with a gangster funeral almost Roman in scope, where the crowds are showered with blue petals from airplanes.
Three sets of unconventional detectives have cases that converge. Dante Sanfilippo is a New York booze runner returning to Chicago from exile in New York at the request of Capone, who wants internal gang troubles investigated. Michael Talbot and Ida Davis, agents at the Pinkertons private detective agency, are looking for a missing heiress. Jacob, a police photographer, is investigating a gruesome alley death, on his own time.
And so we are introduced to the several different worlds of the city. The diversity of the characters, in terms of race and class, gives us access to these. There is complacent old money, garish new money, smoky jazz clubs, dangerous meat yards, and lakeside views.
Ida and Michael will be familiar to readers of The Axeman’s Jazz (https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/the-axemans-jazz-ray-celestin/). Those who loved the vivid portrayal of 1919 New Orleans in that novel will be equally pleased with the 1928 Chicago of Dead Man’s Blues. You don’t have to have read the first one to read this – it can stand alone – but this is the second in a planned quartet, each set in a different city, so it is worth reading in order. Luckily we have both in stock!
Review by Bethan
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August 8, 2016
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Penguin Viking, £12.99, out now
Lucy is in hospital in New York, separated from her husband and young children while her illness rumbles on. Her mother, who she has not seen for many years, comes to visit her, staying by her bedside for several days. The reasons for the physical and emotional distance in the relationship, and the significance of this brief but intense time of conditional reconnection, are illuminated beautifully in this short and powerful novel.
Strout is sharp and sometimes funny, not only on family relationships but on New York life generally: “I have gone to places in this city where the very wealthy go. One place is a doctor’s office. Women, and a few men, sit in the waiting room for the doctor who will make them look not old or worried or like their mother”. But the heart of the book is about the shame and stories of family life, and how we can suddenly be reimmersed in these at moments of strain. Strangely comforting and always interesting, the revelations keep coming right to the end.
I’m now keen to read her earlier work, Olive Kitteridge, having been overwhelmed by the television version with Frances McDormand. My Name is Lucy Barton well deserves its place on the Booker Prize Longlist, along with the excellent Hot Milk (https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/hot-milk-by-deborah-levy/).
Review by Bethan
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July 31, 2016
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Serpent’s Tail, £14.99, out now
Victorian religion, science and superstition battle it out over a possible giant sea serpent off Essex. Cora, whose abusive husband has just died, sets out with her unusual young son Francis and working class activist friend Martha to investigate. Finally able to explore her own interests, this amateur naturalist wonders if the serpent might be a surviving relative of her heroine Mary Anning’s ichthyosaur.
While in Essex, Cora meets Will, an Anglican priest, with whom she immediately connects – and with whom she immediately disagrees over the serpent. Will’s wife Stella welcomes Cora into her home, and becomes close to Francis (who I read as autistic, and whose effective portrayal here reminds me to “think smarter about people who think differently”, see https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/neurotribes-the-legacy-of-autism-and-how-to-think-smarter-about-people-who-think-differently-by-steve-silberman/ ). Left behind in London, Luke, an innovative but impoverished surgeon, is in love with Cora and resentful of her new relationship with Will, while his wealthy friend Spencer considers philanthropy, in part as a possible way to get closer to Martha.
The Essex Serpent is a fresh and gripping story about class, difference, attraction and most of all friendship. The epigraph from Montaigne is identical to that used by Rose Tremain in her recent The Gustav Sonata, another beautiful exploration of how friends are (https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2016/06/29/the-gustav-sonata-by-rose-tremain/ ). This book will appeal to those who loved Sarah Waters’ Victorian novels, Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White, and the gothic elements to fans of Andrew Michael Hurley’s The Loney. Perfect holiday reading.
Review by Bethan
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July 12, 2016
by Team Riverside
Signed copies of the gorgeous new edition of Gaiman’s classic Neverwhere, now in. Get yours before they go…
We also have the small book How the Marquis Got His Coat Back, also set in the Neverwhere universe, if you need a little extra fix too.
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