Diana Hendry 
A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki — review
About halfway through A Tale for the Time Being I had the uncomfortable feeling that this was going to be a reincarnation story and that I would soon discover one… Read more
Memory games
I read this novel while convalescing from pneumonia. It proved admirably fit for purpose. A light diet, mildly entertaining and with enough twists and turns of plot to serve as… Read more
The French connection
If ever there was a novel to which that old adage about not judging a book by its cover could be applied, it’s this one. If ever there was a… Read more
The loss of innocents
Here are two novels about that most harrowing and haunting of subjects — children who go missing. Here are two novels about that most harrowing and haunting of subjects —… Read more
Boys will be boys
Reading this novel I couldn’t help but think of the opening lines of Miroslav Holub’s poem, ‘A Boy’s Head’ — ‘In it there is a space ship/ and a project/… Read more
Laughter in the howling wilderness
Hot on the heels of The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood’s retelling of the story of Penelope and Odysseus, comes The Tent, a neat, must-have little volume with scarlet endpapers, a silky… Read more
All gas and gaiters
It’s irrelevant, I know, but I can’t help wondering what it was like living with D. J. Taylor while he was writing this opus. It’s so steeped in Victoriana and… Read more
Growing up through grief
I’d like to defend Joyce Carol Oates —she’s had so many rotten reviews of this, her latest novel. Reviewers, I reason, must get tired of a writer who publishes a… Read more
A refusal to mourn
‘Every true writer becomes a writer because of a profound trauma experienced in youth or childhood,’ wrote Amos Oz in The Silence of Heaven, his study of the work of… Read more
A concern with appearances
I was bemused by this novel — a first from Katherine Bucknell, better known as an editor of Isherwood’s diaries and of Auden studies. In its concentration on houses (in… Read more
A voice worth listening to
I could tell you about Graham the man, the hard-drinking, wild and wayward Scots poet who spent most of his life in Cornwall among the artists of St Ives, but… Read more
Two very different islands
Reviewing this novel in 1946, when it was first published, Rosamond Lehmann described it as ‘a work of great originality … a blend of fantasy, satire and romantic comedy’. Persephone… Read more
His own worst enemy
My partner wanted to leave the dustwrapper of this book at home. He denied my suggestion that he didn’t want to be seen reading it on the train, claiming it… Read more
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