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Who was it who invented coffee? He must be a cousin of the genius who...
Game for Five, by Marco Malvaldi and translated by Howard Curtis Game for Five was the last book I read in 2015. I read it in the run up to New Year while feeling slightly under the weather from a cold...
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What we won’t do to hang on to a relationship that’s slipping away from us,...
The Disappearance of Signora Giulia, by Piero Chiara and translated by Jill Foulston Back in 2009 the director Carol Morley made a documentary about Joyce Carol Vincent, a woman who lay dead in her...
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The dead man had been killed by a shot from a revolver. So what was the...
The Murdered Banker, by Augusto De Angelis and translated by Jill Foulston Piazza San Fedele was a bituminous lake of fog penetrated only by the rosy haloes of arched street lamps. So far there seem to...
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Doing wrong for its own sake made him happy.
The Hotel of the Three Roses, by Augusto de Angelis and translated by Jill Foulston I recently read De Angelis’ Death of a Banker which I liked but didn’t love. It was a first novel, which showed in...
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A lover of baroque music, classical literature, and women who are still...
Three-Card Monte, by Marco Malvaldi and translated by Howard Curtis I read Marco Malvaldi’s Game for Five while feeling a bit under the weather during Christmas 2015. Fast forward a year and I was...
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How can we fail to see that this change from the combover to the shorn head...
The Combover, by Adrian N. Bravi and translated by Richard Dixon The Combover is one of the funniest, strangest, most uncategorisable novels I’ve read in quite a while. No small thing in a year where...
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only someone who knew how to read the murderer’s soul could unmask them.
The Mystery of the Three Orchids, by Augusto De Angelis and translated by Jill Foulston When it came down to it he was sentimental, and he had an instinctive respect for the dead, for scoundrels who’d...
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People who know how to sing while shaving are fortunate.
A Different Sea, by Claudio Magris and translated by MS Spurr civilization, like gardening, is the art of pruning. This is an unusual one – a book that utterly subverts itself. By a quarter of the way...
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I wondered if you could ever rely on someone who makes their living selling...
I Stole the Rain, by Elisa Ruotolo and translated by Lisa McCreadle Originally I was writing this up for an (overdue) August round-up post, but this was an unexpectedly good read and I think it...
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January roundup (slightly belatedly)
I’d hoped to do my January roundup straight after January ended, but I had an intense period at work and then flu which was fairly brutal. However, I am now pretty much recovered and I thought I’d...
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