The Riverside Bookshop blog
Visit us in London Bridge for new signed copies:
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and the Sun
Yaa Gyasi – Transcendent Kingdom
Zadie Smith and Nick Laird – Weirdo
Megan Nolan – Acts of Desperation
Dolly Alderton – Ghosts
Prue Leith and Peta Leith – Vegetarian Kitchen
James Rebanks – English Pastoral
Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris – The Lost Words
Frances Spufford – Light Eternal
We’re very excited to have signed copies of Platinum Blonde by Phoebe Stuckes and published by Bloodaxe Books.
Order from us by phone or email and get free delivery within the UK.
We’re very happy to have Luan Goldie’s new book Homecoming in stock – and thanks to Luan for dropping by to sign the paperback of her Nightingale Point!
We were delighted to welcome Ben 
Aaronovitch to Riverside to sign copies of his new book, False Value. Come and get them while they’re hot…
Ben generously signed copies of his back catalogue too, so fans can upgrade their collection.
Toni Adeyemi – Children of Virtue and Vengeance
Alain de Botton (editor) – School of Life
John le Carré – Agent Running in the Field
Jung Chang – Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister
Richard Dawkins – Outgrowing God
Carol Ann Duffy – Frost Fair
Emily Gravett – Meerkat Christmas
Frances Hardinge – Deeplight
Simon Jenkins – A Short History of London
Jay Rayner – My Last Supper
Lemn Sissay – My Name is Why
Nigel Slater – Greenfeast: Autumn, Winter
Zadie Smith – Grand Union
Rick Stein – Rick Stein’s Secret France
Hardback, Head of Zeus, £14.99, out now
This excellent supernatural horror mystery opens in 1913 with a 16-year-old girl in rural Suffolk seeing her father leaving the house with an ice pick and hammer. Maud runs after him shouting for help. Too late, she witnesses her father brutally murder someone in the lane outside. But was she really just a witness? And how did she know to shout for help before the attack?
Flash forward 50 years. The press have decided to dig deeper into the story, partly inspired by her father’s paintings. Now cult classics in the 1960s, he painted them in while in a secure hospital following the murder. At least one journalist thinks Maud may have committed the murder herself.
Something about Suffolk lends itself to gothic murder stories, and Wakenhyrst draws effectively on East Anglian myths. Mysterious nature surrounds the isolated gentleman’s residence where Maud and her father live, with the Fens as present in the book as any other character (including Chatterpie the magpie who is the cover star).
Paver explores the lives of women and girls in this remote setting, from maids to ladies of the house. While class separates individuals, women’s solid societal position as less clever, less important, less human than men prevails. Wakenhyrst is psychologically convincing, examining the ground between madness and possible supernatural influences. How people interpret events is interesting, as is the value given to each interpretation: “The rules governed every moment of Maud’s day and there were two different kinds. One sort belonged to the lower orders: it was called superstition and Father detested it, which meant that the servants observed their rules behind his back… The other rules were Father’s – and much stronger, as he had God on his side”.
The tale is creepy and chilling, but thought-provoking. It would lend itself to a firelit room with creaky floorboards, though I enjoyed it on a sunny day outdoors. It’s not cosy crime, with some of the plot being truly horrifying. We have one signed copy left of this physically beautiful book, so get it while it’s hot.
Review by Bethan
Gorgeous new signed copies in…
Michelle Paver – Wakenhyrst
Robert Macfarlane – Underland
Marlon James – Black Leopard Red Wolf
Max Porter – Lanny
Elizabeth Macneal – The Doll Factory
Craig Melvin – The Belle Hotel
We have some lovely signed copies in store!
The Library of Ice by Nancy Campbell
Another Planet by Tracey Thorn
Adèle by Leïla Slimani
Jimmy Page by Chris Salewicz
How to Ride a Bike by Sir Chris Hoy
Get a head start on your Christmas shopping and snap up one of our excellent signed copies… when they’re gone, they’re gone!
Stephen Fry – Heroes
Max Hastings – Vietnam
Neil MacGregor – Living with the Gods
Geraint Thomas – The Tour According to G
Moeen Ali – Moeen
Neil Oliver – The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places
Matt Haig – Notes on a Nervous Planet
Tim Peake – Astronaut Selection Test Book
Peter Stafford-Bow – Brut Force
Sir Chris Hoy – How to Ride a Bike
New in:
William Boyd – Love is Blind
Michael Palin – Erebus: Story of a Ship
Neil MacGregor – Living with the Gods
Sir Chris Hoy – How to Ride a Bike
They won’t be around for long.
We have a few signed copies of their gorgeous new book Art Matters.
We have got some delicious new signed copies in… get them before they go:
Kate Atkinson – Transcription
Sebastian Faulks – Paris Echo
Tom Lee – The Alarming Palsy of James Orr
Patrick Gale – Take Nothing With You
Christie Watson – The Language of Kindness: a Nurse’s Story
We are delighted to have some signed copies of Patrick Gale’s new novel Take Nothing 
with You – get them while they’re hot!
Riverside Bookshop is pleased to be selling the first joint work from the excellent poet Catherine Madden and superb designer Louise Evans. It is a series of poems and 
illustrations in which the authors alternate inspirations. Half the poems are Cat writing in response to drawings by Louise, and half the drawings are by Louise in response to poems by Cat.
We have signed limited editions of this beautiful book for sale. And we are especially proud to have Cat as one of our expert booksellers here at Riverside.
A second book by Cat is due out soon!
We are delighted to have some new signed copies in store, both newly published books and a few returning favourites.
Elske Rahill – In White Ink
Tom Lee – The Alarming Palsy of James Orr
Robert Webb – How Not to Be a Boy
Matt Haig – Father Christmas and Me
Matt Haig – The Girl Who Saved Christmas
Get ‘em while they’re hot!
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
We have some new signed copies:
Tom Lee – The Alarming Palsy of James Orr
Matthew Weiner – Heather, the Totality
Peter Stafford-Bow – Corkscrew
Jenny Uglow – Mr Lear
Nigel Slater – The Christmas Chronicles
Jennifer Bell – The Smoking Hourglass
Max Leonard – Higher Calling
Still a few copies left of:
Matt Haig – Father Christmas and Me
Maggie O’Farrell – I am, I am, I am
Uploaded by Arianna
We have some lovely new signed copies including several by a rather famous actor… get them while they’re hot!
Tom Hanks – Uncommon Type
Alan Bennett – Keep On Keeping On
Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris – The Lost Words
Armistead Maupin – Logical Family
Matt Haig – Father Christmas and Me and The Girl Who Saved Christmas
Natasha and Lauren O’Hara – Hortense and the Shadow
Selling fast right now!
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
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
The 7th Function of Language – Laurent Binet
House of Names – Colm Tóibín
The Nothing – Hanif Kureishi
Into the Water – Paula Hawkins
Anything is Possible – Elizabeth Strout
You Don’t Know Me – Imran Mahmood
First Love – Gwendoline Riley
Believe – Nicola Adams
The Ice – Laline Paull
The Naked Diplomat – Tom Fletcher
The Offering – Grace McCleen
Laline Paull – The Ice
Paula Hawkins – Into the Water
Jon McGregor – Reservoir 13
Elizabeth Strout – Anything is Possible
Gwendoline Riley – First Love
Tom Fletcher – Naked Diplomat
… get ’em before they’re gone!
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
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
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.
Hardback, Tinder Press, £18.99, out now – limited number of signed copies available in store
Daniel is an American academic married to a reclusive former film star, and living in rural Ireland. His happy second marriage to Claudette has produced two young children, to add to the ones he left in California and never sees. But he seems happy enough, until he hears a radio interview from 1986 with one of his exes – the big Ex, as it turns out. He decides to find out what happened to her, and risks his current relationship and everything else in the process.
As we find out more about how Claudette came to run away from her career, and the consequences of Daniel’s investigations, O’Farrell introduces voices from characters we instantly believe in and want to know more about. One of the most memorable scenes in the novel concerns a small child being taken to a children’s dermatology clinic, “for kids who are inflamed with eczema, head to foot, kids for whom normal clothes and unbroken sleep are impossibilities”. It is beautifully written, funny, touching and desperate. The action moves easily between current day Donegal and Paris, international film sets in the 1990s and the Scottish Borders in the 1980s (among other places).
This turned out to be a perfect holiday read for me, with a pacy plot and thoughtful things to say about long term adult relationships. I have read all of O’Farrell’s novels and enjoyed this one the most. A selection on the Radio 2 Book Club, it’s already a swift seller in our shop. If you’re a fan of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections or A M Homes’s May We All be Forgiven, I predict you will love this.
Review by Bethan
Excellent signed copies of several books now in store – perfect for gifts or treating yourself.
Get them before they go!
Susan Hill signed edition
Sort your Christmas book presents with a signed copy of one of the following – all of these are now in store:
Buy while stocks last – when they’re gone they’re gone!
Now in store – limited supplies of signed copies of Number 11 by Jonathan Coe, and also of Where My Heart Used to Beat by Sebastian Faulks.
Both of these new hardbacks have been greeted by great reviews, so pick up your copy now!
We are delighted to have signed hardback copies of Robert Harris’s latest, excellent, book – Dictator. This completes his Cicero trilogy, and has had rave reviews. Get your Christmas shopping underway now!
We now have signed copies of the acclaimed new book by Grace McCleen in stock. A novel about faith, innocence and sin, the lyrical prose also evokes the rhythms and beauty of the natural world. In The Offering, a charismatic psychiatrist believes he can unlock Madeline’s memory by taking her step by step through the preceding year, when her father moved the family to an island he was certain God had guided them to. McCleen’s third novel was praised in The Guardian by poet and author John Burnside as “wonderfully suspenseful and deeply moving… full of insights about the nature of madness”, while the Independent on Sunday described it as “strange and beautiful”.
