Book Reviews

Here's a list of, and links to, all the reviews I've done for Bookmunch since autumn 2009 (newest on top):

The Zone of Interest, Martin Amis
Dubliners 100, ed. Thomas Morris
Dear Life, Alice Munro
Triangle, Hisaki Matsuura
Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart
Thirty Girls, Susan Minot
Because Of What Happened: Fiction Desk Anthology, V5, ed. Rob Redman
Three Novels, César Aira
Ballistics, DW Wilson
Young Skins, Colin Barrett
The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, DT Max
The Secret Knowledge, Andrew Crumey
Town & Country: New Irish Stories, ed. Kevin Barry
Granta 123: The Best Of Young British Novelists 4
Binocular Vision, Edith Pearlman
Various BS Johnson books
Wise Men, Stuart Nadler
Various Donald Antrim books
The Land of Decoration, Grace McCleen
The Garden of Evening Mists, Tan Twan Eng
Shall We Gather At The River, Peter Murphy
Tea at the Midland, David Constantine
Sweet Home, Carys Bray
Raised from the Ground, Jose Saramago
Both Flesh and Not, David Foster Wallace
This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz
Boneland, Alan Garner
Pangea, ed. Chandrasekhar and Lloyd
The Lighthouse, Alison Moore
NW, Zadie Smith
Mother America, Nuala Ní Chonchúir
Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner
Toby's Room, Pat Barker
Close Your Eyes, Ewan Morrison
Hawthorn & Child, Keith Ridgway
Ancient Light, John Banville
The China Factory, Mary Costello
Lionel Asbo, Martin Amis
Granta 119: Britain
The Deadman's Pedal, Alan Warner
Reality, Reality, Jackie Kay
I Burn Paris, Bruno Jasieński
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
Dark Lies The Island, Kevin Barry
Into The Penny Arcade / Marionettes, Claire Massey
New American Haggadah, ed. Jonathan Safran Foer, trans. Nathan Englander
Homesick, Roshi Fernando
Care of Wooden Floors, Will Wiles
Waiting for Sunrise, William Boyd
Dark Eden, Chris Beckett
Falling Sideways, Thomas E. Kennedy
The Beautiful Indifference, Sarah Hall
The Fiction Desk Anthology, Vol 2: All These Little Worlds, ed. Rob Redman
Good Offices, Evelio Rosero
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, Yiyun Li
Everything Beautiful Began After, Simon Van Booy
The BBC National Short Story Award 2011 Anthology
The Blue Book, A.L. Kennedy
The Cat's Table, Michael Ondaatje
Pigeon English, Stephen Kelman
Then, Julie Myerson
Villa Pacifica, Kapka Kassabova
Comes The Night, Hollis Hampton-Jones
On Canaan's Side, Sebastian Barry
The Stranger's Child, Alan Hollinghurst
State of Wonder, Ann Patchett
The Vintage And The Gleaning, Jeremy Chambers
The Fiction Desk Anthology, Vol 1: Various Authors, ed. Rob Redman
The Forgotten Waltz, Anne Enright
The Birth of Love, Joanna Kavenna (and my interview with the author)
Hotel Iris, Yoko Ogawa
Diamond Star Halo, Tiffany Murphy
The Last Werewolf, Glen Duncan
City of Bohane, Kevin Barry
The Coincidence Engine, Sam Leith
How I Lost The War, Filippo Bologna
Spurious, Lars Iyer
Breathers: A Zombie's Lament, SG Browne
A Widow's Story, Joyce Carol Oates
Voice of America, EC Osondu
We Had It So Good, Linda Grant
Granta 113: The Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists
The Granta Book Of The Irish Short Story, ed. Anne Enright
The BBC National Short Story Award 2010 Anthology
The Birth Machine, Elizabeth Baines
Periera Maintains, Antonio Tabucchi
Sharp Sticks, Driven Nails, ed. Philip Ó Ceallaigh
Walking To Hollywood, Will Self
The Elephant's Journey, José Saramago
Nourishment, Gerard Woodward
The Escape, Adam Thirlwell
Death Is Not An Option, Suzanne Rivecca
Circus Bulgaria, Deyan Enev
Gone Tomorrow, PF Kluge
Joe Speedboat, Tommy Wieringa
Love Me Tender, Jane Feaver
Deloume Road, Matthew Hooton
The Stars in the Bright Sky, Alan Warner (and an interview with the author)
Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, Robert Shearman
Ask Alice, DJ Taylor
The Theory of Light and Matter, Andrew Porter
The Housekeeper + The Professor, Yoko Ogawa 

About Me

If anyone needs a level of detail that isn't covered by the photo up on the right - and seriously, I think it says it all - here's a brief Summary Of Life To Date:

I'm thirty-five; I'm Irish; I lived in Dublin until I was twenty-four; I did my BA in English and philosophy (majoring in English) at Trinity College Dublin, and then an MA in Film Production in the Dublin Institute of Technology. A year or so later, after various stints as a runner, a film extra, and a miscellaneous production office grunt, I got a job with a giant broadcasting corporation which shall remain nameless (ha!) here in (hint) Britain, and moved to Birmingham, where I stayed for the next five years working as a video editor. Five years later, when our department (and subsequently the whole West Midlands operation) was imploding, I took redundancy and applied to do another MA, seeing as, in the words of my beloved Depeche Mode, I just can't get enough. This one was in Creative Writing, at the University of Manchester, and it was as good as I'd hoped. After that: a couple of book-selling jobs, a novel that you'll never, ever see, and a baby (hello, Seren!). In 2012, I started a PhD in Creative Writing in the same department (supervised by Ian McGuire), which I'm due to finish very soon. I've had various stories published - see the side-bar.

You guys should all move to Manchester - it's ace.

[Oh, and PS: I don't really do guest posts on here, so probably don't bother asking, and though one of my incarnations is as a book reviewer, this isn't the place for it - if you want me to review something, do please contact Bookmunch instead, and then be aware that there's a team of volunteer reviewers there, of whom I'm only one, and your work might or might not get reviewed by any one of us.]
 
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