Late April thoughts – I was swept away by the compelling drama and emotional pitch of Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. Hers is a beautifully crafted and engrossing novel that delivers on all fronts – it stands out for its exceptional characterisation, intense psychological intrigue, narrative tension that makes you vibrate and a uniquely vivid sense of place (think… remote, wind-swept, rain-lashed and magnificent) and offers a dazzling abundance of detail about the many tiny miracles of biodiversity. This is a universe place where one writer’s soaring imagination collides with the fast-approaching climate catastrophe.
Julian Barnes Departure(s) is an intriguing hybrid. It’s fiction – kind of – but it’s also autobiographical – kind of. One thing it definitely is, however, is a profoundly moving exploration of what truly matters in life and the people and places in which we find happiness.
I’ve just received Jane Harper’s latest, Last one Out, and am saving it for the weekend. Time and again she produces novels that are almost impossible to put down.