April Fool’s Day by Bryce Courtenay

This is a true story written about Courtenay’s youngest son, Damon, who was born a haemophiliac and then became HIV positive as a result of contaminated Factor VIII, the clotting factor required to be used every time he had a “bleed”. Happening in a time when HIV/AIDS was still a very new disease with a [...]

The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam

This was very disappointing. The story sounded intruiging on the back cover but it didn’t grab me at all. The story is set in Afgahnistan and tells of a house in the country where several people arrive seeking various things. Some of the images are quite wonderfully descriptive and thought provoking but I found [...]

The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw

This book was ok. I enjoyed parts of the story very much but I was also disappointed by parts of it and I was left feeling quite unsatisfied at the end. There were aspects of the story that I wanted to hear more about, and I didn’t.
The story is of a Chinese man in Malaysia [...]

The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Time Traveller’s Wife is one of my favourite recent reads. I first read it about a year ago and I loved it. I just re-read it and loved it more. This is one of those books I will read many, many times. From the opening poem, Love After Love :
The time will come
when, [...]

The Other Side of the Story by Marian Keyes

 I have been re-reading some of the books on my shelf and Marian Keyes books are always worth multiple reads. She writes books that can only be described as chick lit and yet its not the kind that irritates me in any way. Instead it is just lovely and comforting and funny and I get [...]