"My God, its full of books"

Part memoir, part celebration of books, reading and the bookish, I fully identified with this and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I listened to this on audiobook rather than reading the physical volume. I found it not so much a dystopian story, as billed, but more a study of one woman's struggle to survive in a harsh landscape, by coming to terms with the natural world. It was enjoyable, and strangely soothing in its repetitive descriptions of her efforts.

An unusual story, and not entirely what I was expecting, but quite moving in terms of the bonds she forms with her animals, her only companions.

A gothic creepy house story that plays with ideas of time, infinity and permanence. It is a fairly long book and for me it lost its way a little in the last 100 pages or so, but still a fun read that never drags.

Not perfect (it has a lot of very bad poetry, and many of the secondary characters are a little one dimensional), but highly enjoyable overall.

I have previously read Melissa Harrison's non fiction nature books (I loved The stubborn light of things), but this is the first of her novels that I have tried. Just like her non fiction work, this is beautifully written, with a deep understanding of the natural world, and with a wonderful empathetic humanity. It is tells the story of an English village over the course of six months, told through the linked narrative voices of the villagers (each chapter through the viewpoint of a different person). Clare, a woman who has lived all her life in the village is dying, but the village too is passing away in so many ways - everything is interconnected.

This was an inventive and experimental novel, Lanchester's debut, the story of Tarquin Winot, a snobbish Francophile food connoisseur. It is told in the form of Winot's narrative description of various menus, through which he gradually reveals his past, and the fact that he might not be all that he at first seems.

Enjoyable, without entirely blowing me away.