Book Review by George S: Locke is a difficult writer to classify. In 1919, J.C. Squire wrote: The position of Mr W.J.Locke has always been a little odd. no serious critic of literature can take him seriously as being in the category of great novelists. And yet no critic can withhold his unwilling admiration for … Continue reading
Patrol (1926) by Philip Macdonald
Book Review by George Simmers: This is a Great War novel set in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), where British army units were fighting the Turks, and also local Bedouin tribesmen. A patrol of ten men has been sent in a mission across the desert, but on the first page its officer is shot by a distant … Continue reading
Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941) by Carson McCullers
Book Review by George Simmers: Reflections in a Golden Eye is set on an isolated American army base, and like a classical tragedy brings together a group of characters in such a way that their juxtaposition brings out the worst in each other, with terrible consequences. The genre is Southern Gothic – as in the … Continue reading
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers
Book Review by Alison B: The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is Carson McCuller’s first novel, published when she was twenty three years old. This review focusses on its broad structure and key themes to enable comparisons of these elements to be made with her other books. It is set in a mill town in … Continue reading
The Haunted Boy (1955) by Carson McCullers
Book Review by Sylvia D: The Haunted Boy brings together three short stories, A Domestic Dilemma (first published in Mademoiselle in 1950), The Sojourner (first published in the New York Post in 1951) and The Haunted Boy (published posthumously in 1955). All three stories explore the theme of loss; loss of a wife to alcoholism, … Continue reading
Lark Rise to Candleford (1945) by Flora Thompson
Book review by Sue R: Flora Thompson wrote the three books which were published in one volume in 1945: Lark Rise(1939), Over to Candleford(1941) and Candleford Green(1943). The books are autobiographical in content. Laura, the main character, lives in a hamlet like Flora did, on the Oxford-Northamptonshire border; they both go to work in a … Continue reading
Financial Times (1942) by Ronald Fraser
Book Review by Chris Hopkins. I had never heard of Ronald Fraser, but bought this novel on impulse in a charity shop several decades ago because I liked the title with its repurposing of the title of one of Britain’s chief business papers to suggest a focus on economics in a particular period. Our January … Continue reading
Psmith in the City (1910) by P.G. Wodehouse
Book Review by George Simmers: Psmith in the City is maybe P.G. Wodehouse’s most autobiographical novel, in that he was in the same predicament as its hero. In 1900, at the age of nineteen, he learned that because his father’s pension was paid in rupees, and the rupee had collapsed, there was not enough money … Continue reading
Cwmardy (1937) by Lewis Jones
Book Review by Jane V: Choosing a novel about the lives of miners in the South Wales coal fields was an obvious choice for me. The last of my forebears to ‘go down the pit’ was my father’s father, born in 1876. He was an only child and his mother did not want him to … Continue reading
Over the Frontier (1938) by Stevie Smith
Book Review by George S: I have often enjoyed Stevie Smith’s poetry, but had never tried her fiction. This month at the Popular Fiction Reading Group we are investigating the first twenty-five titles on the Virago Modern Classics list, which offered an opportunity to find out more. I approached Over the Frontier with curiosity, and … Continue reading
Reading 1900-1950 