Hospital Reading Round-up, or: A Letter of Apology

Dear Reader, I hope you will forgive this break from the usual straightforward literary(?) criticism for this personal note to explain the relative quiet at Reader Dad of late, and to apologise to authors, publishers, publicists and potential readers for the lack of reviews written and published on the site since mid-February. Anyone who follows […]

The 2012 Round-Up

It’s that time of the year again when the “best of the year” lists start to appear. Not wanting to be left out, and because I had some fun with it last year, I’ve decided to do another round-up, and remind everyone what my top ten (or so) books of 2012 are. THE ROUND-UP By […]

WHERE I LEFT MY SOUL by Jérôme Ferrari

WHERE I LEFT MY SOUL Jérôme Ferrari Translated by Geoffrey Strachan MacLehose Press (maclehosepress.com) £12 Released: 10th October 2012 I am always slightly surprised when I come across a book that deals with a period of history of which I have been woefully ignorant. Jérôme Ferrari’s Where I Left My Soul, the French author’s first […]

THE HUMAN PART by Kari Hotakainen

THE HUMAN PART Kari Hotakainen Translated by Owen F. Witesman (www.suomitranslation.com) MacLehose Press (maclehosepress.com) £14.99 Lieutenant Richard Guérin, the protagonist of Antonin Varenne’s Bed of Nails had a theory of interconnectedness that revolved around a red thread tied around the ankles of people who were linked in some way. It’s not until around three-quarters of […]

BED OF NAILS by Antonin Varenne

BED OF NAILS Antonin Varenne Translated by Siân Reynolds MacLehose Press (maclehosepress.com) £18.99 When his friend kills himself on stage in a seedy nightclub in Paris, John Nichols leaves the isolation of his camp in southern France’s Lot and heads to the country’s capital to identify the body. But something doesn’t quite feel right, and […]

THE BLACK PATH by Åsa Larsson

THE BLACK PATH Åsa Larsson Translated by Marlaine Delargy MacLehose Press (maclehosepress.com) £18.99 Late last summer, MacLehose Press published Åsa Larsson’s Until Thy Wrath Be Past. Despite multiple attempts in my review to convince people that it was the third book in the series, it turns out that it was, actually, the fourth. MacLehose’s latest […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

UNTIL THY WRATH BE PAST by Åsa Larsson

UNTIL THY WRATH BE PAST Åsa Larsson Translated by Laurie Thompson MacLehose Press (www.maclehosepress.com) £12.99 Released: 4th August 2011 In the early spring thaw, the body of a young woman is discovered floating in the river Torne, in the northern extremes of Sweden. It doesn’t take long for police to discover that it’s the […]