134,729
edits
Changes
Book Reviews From The Bookbag (view source)
Revision as of 11:56, 17 December 2025
, Wednesday at 11:56no edit summary
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
{{Frontpage
|isbn=02416784121786482126|title=The Proof Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly Griffiths|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008551375|title=When Shadows Fall (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Leanne Wilson's body was found at the bottom of a Scottish mountain, seemingly the result of a tragic accident. She'd looked so happy, too, when she posted her intentions on Facebook. Her friends were relieved as she was just out of an unpleasant relationship, but it looked like she was living her best life now. Then it emerged that five other women had died in similar circumstances in the last year. All were experienced climbers, properly equipped for what they were doing and sensible people. None of the 'what a stupid thing to do' explanations applied. They were all alone when they died: DS Max Craigie is certain there's a killer on the loose.}}{{Frontpage|author=Paul B Preciado|title=Dysphoria Mundi|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=''It is never too late to embrace the revolutionary optimism of childhood'' Through this hybrid text, consisting of arias, letters, essays and autofiction, Preciado expresses his own hybrid self, and brings forth a new sensorium as an offering to the new generation, a new feeling mechanism in which detachment is not considered a sign of political apathy. Rather, it is the proportional, valid response to ''the epistemological and political crack we are living through, and the tension between emancipatory forces and conservative resistances that characterize our present'' which Preciado calls ''dysphoria mundi''. The whole text is framed against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic as that which has catalysed this revolution, when dysphoria began to emerge on a global scale, or as ''pangea covidica''. Rather than taking this extreme dysphoria as a sign of weakness, or mistaking detachment or withdrawal for political paralysis, Preciado urges his readers to ''use dysphoria as your revolutionary platform''. |isbn=1804271454}}{{Frontpage|author=Samantha Harvey|title=Orbital|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In 2024, Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for ''Orbital'', a compact yet profound work that unfolds over a single day in the lives of a group of My Innocenceastronauts aboard the International Space Station. Through a narrative lens that mirrors the astronauts' orbital perspective, Harvey invites readers to see our planet in a wholly new light.|isbn=1529922933}}{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=Jonathan CoeG M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008551324|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.}}{{Frontpage|author=Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Vaim
|rating=4
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary=Life after university hasn''All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=1804271829}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1035043092|title=The Killing Stones (Jimmy Perez)|author=Ann Cleeves|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=I can't worked out quite have been the way that Phyl anticipatedonly person who was sad when Inspector Jimmy Perez [[Wild Fire (Shetland, Book 8) by Ann Cleeves|left Shetland]] to start a new life on Orkney. SheIt's back homebeen seven years since we heard from him, but he's now living with her parents Willow Reeves and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 their young son, James, as well as Cassie, the daughter of Heathrow Airporthis former partner. All those ideas of becoming a writer seem to have come to nothing. The situation improves when Willow's also his boss, and she ''should'Uncle' Chris comes to stay and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughterbe on maternity leave, Rashida. Christopher Swann (described by some as but when the body of a lefty blogger) popular islander, Archie Stout, is investigating a think tank which originated at Cambridge University found, in the 1980saftermath of a storm, she can't resist getting involved. It plans to push He'd been battered about the government in head with a Neolithic stone - one of a pair - which had been stolen from a more extreme direction and is ready to actmuseum.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor= 1836282028Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Fighting Spirit|author=Rob KeeleyTower|rating=45|genre=Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary=''Would you like to adopt a ghost?How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1739526910Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Where I've Not Been Lost|author=Glen SibleyBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's lifeEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, he arrives is steeped in an unfamiliar Devon town to recoveranguish and distortion. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday homeEven a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, he dreams becomes evidence of reconnecting with everything he has love lost. But as those tentative plans falterWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, he becomes swept up in '' it is less an invitation than a local world desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of unlikely friendshipsthis plea is Xavier, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilitiesher ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.''|isbn=1804271934
}}
{{Frontpage
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Annie Ernaux and Alison L. Strayer (translator)
|title=The Other Girl
|rating=4
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=''We were born from the same body. I've never really wanted to think about this.''
Ernaux's work is always very candid and her tone transparent, but this raw epistolary text must be one of the most intimate accounts I've read. Ernaux writes in direct address to her sister, however, this letter will never reach her. Why? Because Annie Ernaux's sister died of diphtheria at 6 years old, a few months before the vaccine was made compulsory in France, and 2 years before the author was even born. The large and instant void created by the jarring concept of writing to an imaginary recipient emphasises Ernaux's process of reckoning with this giant absence in her life, an absence that she has always felt but often denied.
|isbn=1804271845
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Maxim Gorky and Bryan Karetnyk (translator)
|title=Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev
|rating=3.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Biographies are often seen as the form of life-writing which offers less colour; it can be seen as more objective and less personal. I think that Gorky completely rejects this perspective, and offers a vibrant, subjective yet informed portrait of three of his literary contemporaries. In the first section of this book, Tolstoy complains to his friend Gorky that: ''you write not of real life as it is, but of what you yourself imagine it to be. Whom would it help to know how I see this tower, that sea, or that Tartar - why should it interest anyone? Of what use is it?''. Well, Maxim Gorky shows exactly what can be gained from a subjective account, giving us access to how he saw Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev in such privileged detail that one almost feels unworthy of it.
|isbn=1804271977
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1399613073B0FK5LHKD9|title=Moral InjuriesThe Colour of Memory|author=Christie WatsonChristopher Bowden|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersGeneral Fiction|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of It's been three years since we last reviewed a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitiousbook by favourite regular Christopher Bowden, which is a bonus when you aim so we were very glad to be see a cardiothoracic surgeonnew novel arrive here at Bookbag Towers. Laura is Like all Bowden's stories, there's a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is mystery at the free spirit heart of ''The Colour of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them theyMoney're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going to end in tragedy. We donlike this running theme in an author't know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Twentys work -five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. This take a mystery but give it different flavour and atmosphere each time, it's their teenage children who are involved.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=0241636604Olga Tokarczuk|title=The Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary StevensonHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5|genre=AutobiographyLiterary Fiction|summary=If you were to bring up an image ''What's the good of a city banker world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in your mindit?'' The title of this spellbinding work, you're unlikely to think 'House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of someone shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like Gary Stevensonthe shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. A hoodie and jeans replaces But, the pin-stripe suit and his background constant in that image is the East Endhouse, where he was familiar with violencestoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|isbn=henleyA|title=Ultimate Obsession|author=Dai Henley|rating=4|genre=Crime|summary=Ex-DCI Andy Flood has been a Private Investigator for some time now, poverty and injusticehe should be doing quite well financially. There was no posh public school on Unfortunately, his daughter's defence against a murder charge drained his CV - but he had savings. His wife, Laura, has been trying to the London School of Economicspersuade him to retire - ''maybe go travelling or go on cruises. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most That's what 'ordinary people do','' He's not been entirely up front about the state of us can only envytheir savings. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people When Jack Durban tries to persuade him to be stupid. It was take his ability at what wascase, essentially, a card game which got it's the thought of the money he could make that convinces him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, that this turned into permanent employment as is a tradermiscarriage of justice that he really should put right.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Leanne Egan1836284683|title=Lover BirdsThe Big Happy|author=David Chadwick
|rating=4.5
|genre=TeensDystopian Fiction|summary=When new girlWell! This is a murder mystery unlike any other! I do love it when I open a book, Isabel, moves to Louit's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with hernothing like I expected it to be, and it takes me on a wild ride. And thatis just what happened with ''The Big Happy's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn. I don't she? Even though none want to ruin a similar experience for any of her relationships with boys you reading but I'll have gone very well so far, and sheto at least set the scene. Once that's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabeldone, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she?|isbn=000862657XI think you should simply experience this wonderfully original story for yourself.
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=10094730851036916375|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024Just a Liverpool Lad|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)Peter McArdle|rating=54|genre=Politics and SocietyAutobiography|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain 'Just a book by describing what it ''isn'tLiverpool Lad '' is a collection of memories and reflections from the years Peter McArdle spent growing up in and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''around Liverpool. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver Some are factual, such as the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasionsfamily history of a sea-going family, then this isn't with the book for youdocks dominating lives. If that's Other stories blend seamlessly into the what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years-might-have-been. It's a compelling read book to settle into and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return allow your mind to roam across your childhood memories, to politics. think of simpler times when life seemed less constrained, despite the blitz that was a constant factor in McArdle''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beasts early years. ItI's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made d never heard of parachute mines before - but they were almost soundless and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as could appear after the most important. This book follows the wellall-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024clear was sounded.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Max Boucherat1836285493|title=The Last Double Life of Lori Millsa Wheelchair User|author=Rob Keeley|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop inWill is a keen player of video games, babysitter poorlya conscientious student, mother at worka slightly annoying brother and a supportive friend. But most of all, just he is an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesomeaspiring writer. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fortEnglish is his favourite lesson at his school, she has one main intentionMarlowe Park, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's worldone at which he excels. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesnThis hasn't find herself entirely on her owngone unnoticed by his headteacher, Mrs Howarth, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she has suggested to Will and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs his mum that he spends a couple of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screenafternoons a week at a different school, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – wellStation Road, where is a girl to turn?|isbn=0008666482his ability might be better extended.
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Fyodor Dostoyevsky1009473085|title=White NightsThe Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions Politics and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008385068|title=The Midnight Feast|author=Lucy Foley|rating=4.5|genre=ThrillersSociety|summary=ItSometimes it's midsummer on the Dorset coast simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and guests gather at that applies to ''The Manor. ItConservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?'s their opening weekend and splendid celebrations are promised. It's all headed up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor was her ancestral home and sheIf you's converted it into re looking for an impressive retreat for easy read which will deliver the wealthy and famous. Her husband, Owen, was the architect and work is still ongoing on parts of the site. The heat is oppressive and amongst the guests are enemies as well as friends. Old scores are going to be settled and it woninside story about what 't be long before a body is found.}}{{Frontpage|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary='really'Giovanni's Roomhappened on certain occasions, then this isn'' follows t the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay barbook for you. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David If that's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|isbn=0141186356}}{{Frontpage|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence|title=Wild East|rating=4.5|genre=Teens|summary=Written in verse, this is Ronnywhat you's storyre looking for, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white school. The move is initiated by RonnyI don's mum who is worried for Ronnyt think Anthony Seldon's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of trouble. He listens to music constantlybook, and has always dreamed of being a rapper. But now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your words.|isbn=0241645441}}{{Frontpageamazonurl|isbn=1635866847B0BH7SKG2S|title=The Lavender Companion|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci|rating=4Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years.5|genre=Lifestyle|summary= It's strange, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is the book a compelling read and should be compulsory for youanyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. Before I started reading ''The Lavender CompanionConservative Effect'', I visited the author's [https://wwwis an entirely different beast.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and there It's the seventh book in a picture of series which looks at the impact a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes government has made and desserts co- but I wanted that cake viscerallyeditor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. (There's a recipe in the This book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading follows the book and I was told to make well-established format: a mess series of experts from various fields review the state of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get to fold down nation when the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I ''loved'' this book already.}}{{Frontpage|author=Han Kang|title=The Vegetarian|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=This novelcoalition took over in 2010, winner of the International Booker Prize in 2016 changes that occurred and penned by an author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, is as close to unputdownable as it gets. It more than lives up to the acclaim. The story introduces uncanny characters with fragile, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowable, elusive soulssituation in 2024.|isbn=1803510056
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Onyi Nwabineli1529934753|title=Allow Me to Introduce MyselfThe Protest|author=Rob Rinder
|rating=4.5
|genre=General FictionCrime|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to For a little while, it looked as though Sir Max Bruce, the worldcountry's most famous living artist, thanks was not going to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social mediashow up for the opening of his retrospective at the Royal Academy. Still, where she posted every step he arrived in the nick of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships time, complete with his two wives and six children, one of whom filmed what happened. Being an influencer deals , you tend to do things like that, but it was fortunate that there was a record of the protest. Lexi Williams, an intern at the RA, grabbed a spray can of blue paint from under a chair andproceeded to spray Bruce in the face, basicallywhilst shouting ''Stop the War''. It seemed to be part of an ongoing series of 'blue-face' attacks, monetary gainbut this was different. Now Anuri is in her twenties The can had been laced with cyanide, and Sir Max Bruce was dead.}}{{Frontpage|author=Ariel Saramandi|title=Portrait of an Island on Fire|rating=4.5|genre=Politics and she is slowly trying Society|summary=In this powerful collection of essays, Saramandi seeks to regain her confidence intradermally dissect the sociopolitical fabric of Mauritius, tunneling deep into the wounds left by colonialism and slavery to get her expose how these legacies still shape modern life back. Saramandi describes the country at one stage as ''rotting'', suing her step-mother to take down a blunt yet apt metaphor for the content systemic decay brought about herby the malignant forces of racism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and governmental dysfunction. Anuri is battling alcoholismEach essay in this collection serves as a kind of diagnostic, failing to start her PhDcharting the various diseases afflicting the island state.|isbn=1804271616}}{{Frontpage|author=Pekka Harju-Autti|title=LoveVortex and the Drakor's Curse|rating=4|genre=Fantasy|summary=It's the eighteenth century, undergoing therapy a time of discovery and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing soBritain is expanding its foreign trade. Most importantlyCaptain Julius Hawthorne, she is desperately worried about her little sisteran experienced Scottish sea captain, who is sent to the new focus of Ophelia's online empireAndaman Islands in his endeavour. Can she save her sisterAlong with his son, Peter, and their cat, Michi, they set off on a perilous voyage to these faraway lands. The islands are beautiful and perhaps herself stunning in their scenery and her relationship with her father at the same time?islanders' leader, Aarav, is keen to establish good relations.|isbn=0861546873B0DS1VGHH3
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=David ChadwickHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Headload of NapalmLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=ThrillersLiterary Fiction|summary= It's September 1973 First published in Hicks1953 in French, California. Hicks this novel is a Mojave desert town timeless text which wrenches the hearts of a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours of LA readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and Las Vegas both a significant drive awaypositions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Not much happens in Hicks. A silver mine and a defence contractor are Like the main local employers but otherwise, there's not much lives of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiether characters, until...they are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn= B0D321VJ761804271675
}}
{{Frontpage
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbnauthor=1786482126Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)|author=Elly GriffithsAccidentals
|rating=4.5
|genre=CrimeShort Stories|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house This collection was truly enchanting in Norwich - all senses of the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working word: spellbinding with DCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.}}{{Frontpage|author=Joan Didion|title=The Year of Magical Thinking|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=This book is Joan Didion's heartbreaking autobiographical account of the grief she endured following her husband's sudden death. Books that shed light on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful and necessary resource to help people feel less alone. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pityits fantastical, denial magical elements and delusion and makes them utterly normal, lends them a human face to wear.|isbn=0007216858}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0008551324|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)|author=Neil Lancaster|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling charming in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body its gentle portrayal of a missing person is buried nature and who was responsible for her deathhuman relationships. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and to get an early parole date. Not much to askprecisely, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.}} {{Frontpage|title=Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art her stories structured by Bad People?|author=Claire Dederer|rating=3|genre=Politics and Society|summary=Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a ''biography of the audience'' in a deconstructed, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of the old aphorism of separating the art from the artist in the context of contemporary ''cancel culture''. Dederer's work is original and expressive. The reader gets the impression wisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. In particular, the prologue packs a punch: she simultaneously condemns and exalts the director Roman Polanski, an artist she personally admires for his art, and yet despises for his actions. This model of ''monstrous men'' as she calls them, is consistent for the first few chapters, interrogating the likes of Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picasso. Her critical voice is acutely present throughout, never slipping into anonymity and maintaining her own subjectivity, as she holds it so dearly, and a personal, rather than collective voiceworld.|isbn=13997150701804271470
}}