TRIESTE by Daša Drndić

TRIESTE Daša Drndić Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac Maclehose Press (maclehosepress.com) £20.00 BEHIND EVERY NAME THERE IS A STORY These words, on an otherwise blank page, some 140 pages into Daša Drndić’s Trieste, and the forty-four pages that follow which contain the names of “about 9000 Jews who were deported from Italy or killed in Italy […]

ANGELMAKER by Nick Harkaway

ANGELMAKER Nick Harkaway (www.nickharkaway.com) William Heinemann (www.randomhouse.co.uk/editions/imprint/william-heinemann) £12.99 Every so often, I run across a book that catches me completely by surprise; a book that I picked up on a whim, having never heard of it before, that strikes a chord and immediately becomes a firm favourite. Nick Harkaway’s first novel, The Gone-Away World, was […]

EASY MONEY by Jens Lapidus

EASY MONEY Jens Lapidus Translated by Astri von Arbin Ahlander Macmillan (www.panmacmillan.com) £12.99 Released: 2nd February 2012 When Jens Lapidus’ debut novel, Easy Money, landed on my desk, it came bearing a quote that is almost inevitable these days on the English translations of Swedish novels – the quote that compares this writer to Stieg […]

STOLEN SOULS by Stuart Neville

STOLEN SOULS Stuart Neville (www.stuartneville.com) Harvill Secker (www.vintage-books.co.uk) £12.99 Released: 26 January 2012 Stuart Neville fairly burst onto the crime fiction scene in the middle of 2009 with his first novel, The Twelve (released later that year in the US under the title The Ghosts of Belfast). The novel, bearing high praise from James Ellroy, […]

11.22.63 by Stephen King

11.22.63 Stephen King (www.stephenking.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £19.99 It’s a daunting thing, sitting down to write a review of a full-length Stephen King novel, for someone who hangs on every word the man has ever written. The problem is that remaining objective – reviewing the work at a remove, as it were – is […]

An Interview With SIMON LELIC

Photograph © Kate Eshelby Name: SIMON LELIC Author of: RUPTURE (2010) THE FACILITY (2011) THE CHILD WHO (2012) On the web: http://www.simonlelic.com On Twitter: @simon_lelic Simon Lelic burst onto the crime fiction scene in early 2010 with his, frankly, stunning novel, Rupture, the story of a police officer’s investigation into a horrific school […]

The 2011 Round-Up

As the end of the year approaches, I have decided to break from the straightforward review posts that have populated Reader Dad to date, to do a brief round-up of the year’s reading, including my Top 10 of 2011 and my Most Disappointing of 2011. THE ROUND-UP If you have checked out my newly-added Reading […]

THE CHILD WHO by Simon Lelic

THE CHILD WHO Simon Lelic (www.simonlelic.com) Mantle (www.panmacmillan.com) £12.99 Released: 5 January 2012 Earlier this year, in the inaugural post on Reader Dad, I noted that Simon Lelic, after only two novels, is an absolute must-read author. His third novel, the tense and ultimately heart-breaking The Child Who is released in January, and is, to […]

THE CLUMSY GHOST by Alastair Jessiman et al

THE CLUMSY GHOST AND OTHER SPOOKY TALES Alastair Jessiman, Anna Britten, David Blake, Roy McMillan, Edward Ferrie, Margaret Ferrie, David Angus Read by Sean Barrett, Harry Somerville, Anne-Marie Piazza, Roy McMillan, Thomas Eyre Naxos Audiobooks (www.naxosaudiobooks.com) £10.00 (Available as a CD audiobook or digital download) I have, for a long time, been a fan of […]

JULIA by Otto de Kat

JULIA Otto de Kat Translated by Ina Rilke Maclehose Press (maclehosepress.com) £12.00 A brief flick through previous entries in this blog will show the reader that I have something of a fascination with the events of the Second World War. Not so much the war itself, but the individual stories that make up the fabric […]