Category Archives: review

Sarah Salway: An Appreciation

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Charles Lambert

This is another one of those posts that starts off with a disclaimer, I’m afraid. I first met Sarah Salway a few months ago when she bought me lunch at Waterstones in Piccadilly, but we’d been in touch for a … Continue reading →

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Out of Sight, by Isabelle Grey

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Charles Lambert

First of all, a disclaimer. Isabelle Grey and I knew each other at university. We lost touch after that, and only made contact again last November, after 35 years, when Isabelle left a message on this very blog to say hello … Continue reading →

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Cleaver, by Tim Parks

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Charles Lambert

I’m a fan of Tim Parks, not just the kind that buys and reads his books with pleasure, but the aspirational kind. It started years ago, when he was publishing his first novels and I was writing (and not publishing) … Continue reading →

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Siri Hustvedt, The Summer without Men

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Charles Lambert

What must it be like to be left by one’s partner after years of marriage? It’s a subject that’s often addressed in novels, but my impression is that these novels tend to be written by women. (I’d like to be … Continue reading →

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David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Charles Lambert

The first book I remember being given by anyone outside my immediate family was an end-of-year prize awarded by the local Sunday school – Enid Blyton’s The Land of Far Beyond. I was six years old and the prize was for attendance rather than … Continue reading →

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Niall Griffiths, Ten Pound Pom

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Charles Lambert

One of my father’s brothers lived in Perth. He came back to the UK when I was a child, with his Australian-born wife, to visit. He was a brash, arrogant man who thought that the Lambert family – or his … Continue reading →

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Steve Hely, How I Became a Famous Novelist

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Charles Lambert

What made me buy this? A good review in a broadsheet a month or so ago? The author’s credentials as writer for David Letterman and The (American) Office ? Or the sneaking, inadequately suppressed and probably best not shared suspicion that it … Continue reading →

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Helen Garner, The Spare Room

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Charles Lambert

It’s a truism that we no longer know what to do with death, that we skirt it as a source of discomfort and unease, as something extraneous to the business in which we’re so completely, so passionately engaged, that of … Continue reading →

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Kay Sexton, Minding My Peas and Cucumbers

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Charles Lambert

I was never much of a gardener as a child, despite the evidence of the muddied wellingtons and the working-man’s size mug of tea in this photograph. I grew up in large, half-renovated houses with rambling gardens, and my mother … Continue reading →

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Amy Bloom, Where the God of Love Hangs Out

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Charles Lambert

Falling in love isn’t really that hard to write about. People having been doing it for centuries, winding the story up as it heads towards the altar, or some exciting irremediably other place that marks the new start for the … Continue reading →

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