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Any Human Face
After enjoying Charles Lambert’s Little Monsters so much, I was looking forward to his latest novel, Any Human Face, and I was not disappointed. Set in Rome, this novel is a fast-paced and dark tale of murky deeds in high and low places, recounted from multiple perspectives over a span of nearly three decades. What…
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Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day
I enjoyed reading this reissue of a 1938 novel, now published in Persephone’s smart grey livery. It’s a tale of one day, but isn’t a Mrs Dalloway or Ulysses. The eponymous Miss P is a timid, dowdy failed governess who finds herself by accident plunged into a demi-monde of bright young things, night-clubs and all…
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Oh for an editor
Over at Patternings, Ann Darnton points out how her reading of Chesil Beach was spoilt by Ian McEwan’s failure to get a contemporary detail right – he has his protagonist playing Beatles and Rolling Stones covers of Chuck Berry before they were recorded. On one level it’s a minor detail, but on another, as Ann…