Shouting at the Window
A man takes a train journey between two (unnamed) cities. Haynes - we only ever get to know his surname - is on the margins of society: a petty criminal, living from day-to-day, who has had to flee from his usual territory to somewhere more secure...
On the Carousel
On the Carousel is the story of a young man’s journey through the decade – against the background of Thatcherism and Madonna and Cabbage Patch Dolls – as he enjoys the benefits of success, but then starts to re-assess his values and priorities...
Latest from the Blog
The Sorrow of Belgium (Het Verdriet van België) by Hugo Claus (1983)
21st October 2025 The Sorrow of Belgium is generally recognised to be one of the most significant 20th Century novels written in Dutch. It is a long read – just over 600 pages – of which the first 40 per cent or so set the scene in 1939 with the remainder then taking the narrative…
Jaws by Peter Benchley (1974)
28th August 2025 It is now 50 years since Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster Jaws took the cinematic world by storm, its combination of narrative conflicts, breath-taking shocks and special effects – aided by John Williams’s dramatically sinister score – relating how Amity Island in New England was being terrorised by a man-eating Great White shark. (Not…
The Reader (Der Vorleser) by Bernhard Schlink (1995)
1st July 2025 When the 15 year-old Michael Berg is taken ill in the street, he is comforted by Hanna Schmitz, a neighbour in her mid-30s. She cleans him up and then accompanies him back to the home that he shares with his parents and three siblings in the suburbs of Heidelberg in the German…
JR Alexander 