Salman Rushdie had been living under threat of assassination for more than three decades when he was finally attacked on stage in the summer of 2022. A man with a knife ran up to the stage and stabbed him multiple times before he began speaking. He survived the attack, but was left with some permanent READ MORE
Category: Sunday Review
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | JUST ANOTHER MISSING PERSON – GILLIAN MACALLISTER
I decided to read this book because I loved Wrong Place Wrong Time by McAllister that I read before this one. It was such an exciting thriller with great pacing and interesting twists and turns – not to mention the unique premise! I wanted to see if there were other books by her that might READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | SCATTER BRAIN – SHAPARAK KHORSANDI
Ever since my own diagnosis, I’ve been on the hunt for books by and about other women who also have ADHD – especially those who, like me, went most of their lives with absolutely no idea they had it. It’s a special type of trauma to spend your life feeling like all the things that READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | I AM, I AM, I AM – MAGGIE O’FARRELL
Maggie O’Farrell is quickly becoming an author who I just know, before I even read the blurb, will deliver. I’ve only read three of her books so far, and each has been completely different (first was Hamnet which is a fictional novel about Shakespeare’s family, then Instructions for a Heatwave which is about a family READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | SPLINTERS – LESLIE JAMISON
I was intrigued by the blurb of this book, because I’ve really been enjoying memoirs written by women who are around my age who are writing about what it means to be a mother, and further to that, what particular challenges are thrown down for mothers in this day and age. Jamison dives head-first into READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME – GILLIAN MCALLISTER
Wow. That’s the one word version of this review. I can’t believe it took me this long to finally read this blockbuster book, or that I went into it with zero idea what I was getting into. Honestly, I think that’s probably the best way to experience it, so if you want to go and READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | IS THIS ANYTHING? – JERRY SEINFELD
Thanks to the 90s TV show, it feels as if Seinfeld has been part of the backdrop of popular culture for most of my life. I wasn’t an early devotee to Seinfeld – I saw the odd episode here and there, I knew who Kramer and George Costanza were, but I didn’t go out of READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | I’LL SHOW MYSELF OUT – JESSI KLEIN
I love this new genre of books written by mothers – often middle-aged ones – that tell the nitty gritty truth of what it’s actually like to make, birth, and raise tiny humans in today’s world. Spoiler alert: not easy. In this collection of essays, Jessi Klein explodes the cult of silence that has surrounded READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | BOMB SHELTER – MARY LAURA PHILPOTT
In Bomb Shelter Mary Laura Philpott introduces herself while lying upside down on her living room floor, rendered immobile at the age of forty-four by two herniated discs. While she’s down there, she ruminates on memories of her family, Christmases past, the house they share, and thinks about how she ended up there. But quickly READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE MESSY LIVES OF BOOK PEOPLE – PHAEDRA PATRICK
When we meet Liv, she is in a situation many of us have faced in our lives. Her life is spent on jobs that are necessary but not enjoyable – her work life is spent cleaning offices and homes for people who see through her and don’t notice or care much about the work she’s READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | CHRONIC – REBECCA DIMYAN
I always find it interesting to read memoirs by people who have dealt with – or are dealing with – medical issues. Particularly if they’re debilitating and, as the name of this book says, chronic. One of my favourite such book was The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, which I have read one and READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | ALL THE UGLY AND WONDERFUL THINGS – BRYN GREENWOOD
The story in this book seems to be an easy one to judge. There are some things that seem to be moral absolutes. And yet, somehow this book takes some of the most basic moral absolutes and makes them ambiguous. It takes the easy good guys and has them become at best misguided, at worst READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE – MAGGIE O’FARRELL
It’s been rather warm here over the past couple of months (except, of course, the last week), so this felt like a very thematic book to tackle this summer. I haven’t read many of Maggie O’Farrell’s books – in fact, before this, I’d only read one. But that one made such an impression on me READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE STORY OF ARTHUR TRULUV – ELIZABETH BERG
Sometimes even for very different people at very different points in their lives, there is a shared experience. In this book, that shared experience is loneliness. The book begins in a cemetery. Maddy, a lonely teenaged girl, is there on her lunch hour to visit her mother’s grave. Arthur Moses is there – as he READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | LOCALLY LAID – LUCY B. AMUNDSEN
I enjoy books about pretty much any kind of pursuit that works with part of nature in a respectful way. Whether it’s gardening, homesteading, farming, wilding, or – as in this case – raising chickens for eggs. It all started with a modest backyard brood of hens. Manageable, not too difficult to care for, produced READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | IN A SUNBURNED COUNTRY – BILL BRYSON
Bill Bryson is a fixture in the world of travel writing, and for good reason. His books have long been favourites of mine, and this one may very well be top of the pile. I read it a couple of decades ago, and have been wanting to re-read it pretty much ever since. Not only READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | GROWING OLD – ELIZABETH MARSHALL THOMAS
If things go to plan, growing old is something we all expect to face at some point. When we are young – like, really young – we don’t feel as if this is the truth. Older people, even those our parents’ age, seem like a whole different species. Then we make it to adulthood, and READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | HIDDEN NATURE – ALYS FOWLER
Anyone who has been familiar with Alys Fowler for any length of time knows her most as a gardener. She was a presenter on Gardener’s World, and had her own mini-series called The Edible Garden in which she used a combination of polyculture and foraging to grow and find most of the fruit and vegetables READ MORE