Samantha Cox
This is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz
Reviewed on October 15, 2012
Junot Diaz is one of contemporary America’s most engaging writers and his latest work is a warm, compellingly written collection of love letters to betrayed girlfriends and elegies to past selves. The stories are held together by the confident, playful narrative of Yunior, a Dominican in New York who has featured in two of Diaz’s previous books; [...]
The Spider King’s Daughter, by Chibundu Onuzo
Reviewed on July 10, 2012
Across west Africa, young men and women sell goods at the side of dusty roads, running up to the windows of cars and buses to sell snacks, water, even shampoo to the passengers. These quiet roadside exchanges, through which different echelons of society meet, are ripe for exploration at a time when the gaps between [...]
It Chooses You, by Miranda July
Reviewed on January 18, 2012
It Chooses You – which could act as a companion piece to Miranda July’s recently released second film, The Future – is about as filmic as a book can be. A collection of transcribed interviews and photographs, it’s as eclectic as a short story collection and as unobtrusive as a good documentary. The book details [...]
How It All Began, by Penelope Lively
Reviewed on December 19, 2011
Charlotte, a pensioner with an active mind but an ailing body, sits at her daughter’s house and watches time pass as she recovers from a broken hip. The mugging which has snatched away her independence kicks a host of other characters into new, exciting orbits, from budding romances to career opportunities. As they deal with [...]
Late for Tea at the Deer Palace, by Tamara Chalabi
Reviewed on September 18, 2011
Memoirs of exile tend to be a political as well as a personal project - an attempt to make sense of an individual’s life by untangling their country’s history. Tamara Chalabi’s sensitive and meticulously researched portrait of her Iraqi family is, accordingly, also a portrait of Iraq, a country changed beyond recognition by the changes that [...]
Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray
Reviewed on July 26, 2011
Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies is a rare combination of light and dark: a novel that makes the reader smile with affection and recognition while unpicking unpalatable truths. The novel focuses on a group of fourteen-year-old boarders at a Dublin school for boys, who are teetering on the precipice of adulthood. At its centre are roommates Daniel [...]
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, by Lola Shoneyin
Reviewed on February 13, 2011
Since independence Nigeria has produced generation after generation of talented writers. Many – including contemporary authors, such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche – have written powerfully and eloquently about the country’s traumatic history and the poverty and corruption that still plague the country. Yet despite these problems, Nigeria remains one of the happiest countries in the [...]
Beer in the Snooker Club, by Waguih Ghali
Reviewed on January 21, 2011
This 1964 novel, recently re-released by Serpent’s Tail, sketches out the concerns of a generation of Egyptians torn between old and new political allegiances. The country’s confusion and contradictions following the 1952 coup d’état are neatly embodied in the novel’s narrator, Ram, who is a product of his time and class but, equally, a typical young [...]
Last Night in Twisted River, by John Irving
Reviewed on November 2, 2010
John Irving’s fans often keenly list the themes that characterise his novels. Bears, absent mothers, wrestling, the state of New Hampshire: these devices all point beyond a single book to the author’s wider body of work. This, coupled with the fact that writers often feature in his novels, means that his books are already very [...]
The Wonder, by Diana Evans
Reviewed on August 16, 2010
In Phillip Larkin’s poem, ‘High Windows’, the speaker looks in on a changing 1960s Britain and finds it impossible to describe the newly-found freedom he witnesses in words. Instead an image comes to mind that is bewildering rather than liberating in its vastness: Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, [...]
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The Bookgeeks Interview
Mark Oldfield
Mark Oldfield has worked in criminological research for over 20 years. He has a PhD in Criminology from the University of Kent and has carried out research in the areas of risk assessment and prediction and as well as evaluative research on policing, prisons and probation. He has also taught in various Universities on research, crime and criminal justice.
