At the end of her book, Mary writes: ‘Donald today is much as he was at three years old: incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in and synthesize information.’ Donald is the fourth of five children – Maryanne, Freddy, Elizabeth, Donald and Robert – born …
In destitution, even of feeling or purpose, a human being is more hauntingly human and vulnerable to kindnesses because there is the sense that things should be otherwise, and then the thought of what is wanting and what alleviation would be, and how the soul could be put at ease, restored. At home. But the …
Sally Carson, born in 1902, worked for a publisher in England and, in her late twenties and early thirties, spent her holidays in Bavaria, staying with German friends. An intelligent and observant woman, she was able to see the situation in Germany from an ‘outsider’s’ perspective; she could see what others could not, or refused …
In 2017, Peter Greste published The First Casualty; in 2025, with the successful launch of the film The Correspondent, based on The First Casualty, he republished his book (with many updates) as The Correspondent. A dual-nationality holder – Australian and Latvian – Greste, a journalist and foreign correspondent since the early 1990s, has worked in …
There is a film based on the book, but I am dubious that a Hollywood interpretation of this novella could possibly compete with Capote’s remarkable story. Set in the 1940s the story has at its centre Holly Golightly, who is 19 years old and who is described thus: ‘the ragbag colors of her boy’s hair, …
Towards the end of The Lost Life, Carroll’s first book in his T.S. Eliot Quartet, Miss Emily Hale says to eighteen-year-old Catherine: “We must grasp our moments as they arise (…) never, never assume that they will come back. People may come back into our lives, but not the time or the moment. And, in …
I almost did not finish this book. Around the 60-page mark, I was more than ready to move on; however, for some unknown reason I continued. There were definitely things I did not like about the book, but there were other things as well: things that were thought-provoking. The book is beautifully written and painstakingly …
Flora Poste at 19 has had a benevolent upbringing, wanting for nothing, and when her parents die in the Spanish ‘flu, leaving her a yearly sum that is (unfortunately) much less than she had anticipated, she decides that she needs to be able to continue with a gentle existence without (need I add) the alarming …
When Tokarczuk writes: ’… If people behave brutally towards Animals no form of democracy is ever going to help them, in fact nothing will at all.’ she sums up one of the main themes in this book: our attitude towards animals, and as a follow-on, our attitude towards each other. With each chapter opening with …
Beautifully and thoughtfully written this book, coloured by the aftermath of the war as well as the early years of modern psychotherapy, reveals a great depth of understanding, regarding human relations, actions and interactions. Constructed almost entirely using conversation, Mine Own Executioner could almost be equated with a play, although there are sufficient descriptive passages …