November wrap-up

Book of the Month

November turned out (by accident rather than design) to be a month where all the books I blogged originated from this year. And the best of the lot was Christopher Priest’s first novel in nine years, The Islanders — an exquisitely crafted piece of work which provides a set of narrative pieces in the form of gazetteer entries, and leaves readers to construct the story (or stories).

Reviews

• The Islanders by Christopher Priest [****]
• The Silver Wind by Nina Allan [****]
• ‘Sullom Hill’ by Christopher Kenworthy [***½]
• Landfall by Helen Gordon [***]
• The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett [***]
• ‘Remains’ by G.A. Pickin [***]
• Three pieces from Granta 117, by Will Self, Rajesh Parameswaram, and Julie Otsuka
• …and I completed my story-by-story review of A Book of Horrors.

Features

• I get analytical about reading analytically.
• Sampling Weidenfeld & Nicolson’s forthcoming debuts.