doombiscuits

“Light and dark, light and dark, like a door opening and closing”

Weathering by Lucy Wood

March 10, 2016 by Doombiscuits 2 Comments

Lucy Wood’s 2015 debut novel Weathering is stunning and homely; it simultaneously feels like a chilly walk in the rain and a cup of tea by a fireside. It’s a non-scary story about ghosts, and a scary story about loneliness and memory; it’s a story about rivers and birds and photographs and family. Ada is a single mother with a bright but complicated small daughter called Pepper and an even more difficult relationship with her own mother Pearl, recently deceased but not gone. (This isn’t a spoiler–Pearl’s voice is evident from early on in the book). Ada and Pepper come […]

3/10/2016 Doombiscuits's CBR8 Review No:5 |

“All her streets obscure / Sparkle and swarm with nothing true nor sure,”

The Town in Bloom by Dodie Smith

February 29, 2016 by Doombiscuits 2 Comments

This is another review in the vein of “I love the author but I quite like this book”. In this case, more specifically, it’s “I love a book by this author so much that its inky veins somehow run in mine, that I read it once a year at least and every time I notice something new, that its phrasing and insight sometimes shapes how I see a particular kind of landscape, or light, or expression on a face”–but this book I’m reviewing is not like that. The book by Dodie Smith that I love so much is, of course, […]

2/29/2016 Doombiscuits's CBR8 Review No:4 |

“You have epiphanies all the time. They just don’t have any effect.”

Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher

February 17, 2016 by Doombiscuits 4 Comments

I love Carrie Fisher’s performance in the original Star Wars films, and in The Force Awakens; her eyes in particular slew me. It was her appearance on 30 Rock, however, and her sharp, wild and funny chat show appearances on Conan and The Graham Norton Show, as well as her comments on Hollywood, that made me want to read her books. I began with Postcards from the Edge (1987). It’s very good. It’s a fragmented sort of narrative that reflects its title; it begins with a set of postcard texts that suggest disorientation and desperation, and ends with a letter […]

2/17/2016 Doombiscuits's CBR8 Review No:3 |

“The next steps are dizzying”

Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom by Catriona McPherson

February 16, 2016 by Doombiscuits Leave a Comment

This is the third Dandy Gilver novel of Catriona McPherson’s series that I have reviewed for Cannonball Read; they seem to be pleasingly coming out yearly, and towards the end of one year and around the beginning of the next, I begin to keep an eye out for them at my local library. The new Dandy Gilver is a seasonal pleasure I vaguely look forward to, like Christmas pudding, or not having hayfever. However, I’m beginning to wonder if this routine is such a good thing after all–ever since the titles embraced the vintage ‘cosy crime’ style of ‘Dandy Gilver […]

2/16/2016 Doombiscuits's CBR8 Review No:2 |

they discern/what equilibrium they can recover

Carol (also published as The Price of Salt) by Patricia Highsmith

January 31, 2016 by Doombiscuits Leave a Comment

Well, it’s not like Cate Blanchett would choose to star in the adaptation of a bad Patricia Highsmith novel. I haven’t actually seen the film, but the trailers and still photographs project a certain sort of aesthetic that I found intriguing–rich colours, gleaming cocktails, and soft lights; crisp coral lipstick on a smile that says come hither and f**k off. This is the first novel of Highsmith’s that I’ve read; as Val McDermid points out on the cover of my edition, it has “the drive of a thriller but the imagery of a romance.” It’s the 1950s in New York; […]

1/31/2016 Doombiscuits's CBR8 Review No:1 |

Sire, the night is darker now / And the wind blows stronger

Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story by J. Jefferson Farjeon

December 15, 2014 by Doombiscuits 2 Comments

Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story (1937) exploits seasonal chill to the max on every possible level. It’s cold, neck-deep in snow–and there might be ghosts or other unearthly things hiding in the shadowy whiteness. The story begins conventionally enough, with a group of strangers stuck on a train that’s stuck in a snowdrift. One of them, an elderly man who seems to know a lot about the paranormal, and the traces left on the present by violent or highly emotionally-charged events of the past, suddenly heads off into the blinding whiteness. A bit nonplussed, the rest of the […]

12/15/2014 Doombiscuits's CBR6 Review No:26 |

More Please

Yes Please by Amy Poehler

December 13, 2014 by Doombiscuits Leave a Comment

I love Parks and Recreation, and I think Leslie Knope is a heroine for the ages–fierce, funny, sweet, occasionally wrongheaded, but mostly blazing with the desire to make the world, or at least the small, quirky town of Pawnee, a fairer, healthier, and more beautiful and fun place. The woman behind Leslie’s defiant curls, bright eyes and mercurial expressions, Amy Poehler, is more flawed, more mixed-up–but, judging by Yes Please, also someone you’d want to go for a hike with, followed by dancing at the Snakehole Lounge and breakfast at J.J’s. Yes Please has received a (mostly) positively response from […]

12/13/2014 Doombiscuits's CBR6 Review No:25 |

Black sheep and stage fright

Died in the Wool (23) and Final Curtain (24) by Ngaio Marsh

December 4, 2014 by Doombiscuits Leave a Comment

I can never decide whether Ngaio Marsh’s Died in the Wool (1945) has one of the silliest or best detective fiction titles I have ever seen, and there are a lot of bad ones out there (ahem, Charlaine Harris). The story seems to be constructed around the pun; the dead body of a lady sheep farmer and member of parliament in New Zealand is found rather mashed up in…a pack of wool. It’s like calling a book Bloody Mary and having the main character be a woman called Mary who drowns in a vat of tomato juice clutching a stick […]

12/4/2014 Doombiscuits's CBR6 Review No:24 |

emmalita on Why Change is HardThis sounds really interesting. Is it more geared towards organizations, or would an individual working outside of an organized structure benefit?
Jen K on Dating and Food in LAThat is kind of a perfect description. There really isn’t much conflict; they slip into a relationship, Nik gets cold feet, and then she gets...
Jen K on The ReverendVery cool! Congratulations to your friend! A friend recently asked me to read a novel she is working on for feedback, and I can’t wait...
emmalita on Dating and Food in LAI really liked the way this one started, but it ended on a whimper for me.
emmalita on Choose Your Own Austin AdventureI liked this one a lot too.

Search This Site