Amanda Rayner
Amanda Rayner is from Readings Carlton
Review — 28 Jun 2020
The Fogging by Luke Horton
On a plane to Indonesia for a holiday that struggling academics Tom and Clara really can’t afford, Tom experiences a sudden and intense panic attack (not his first) while his…
Review — 6 Sep 2020
The Doctor Who Fooled the World by Brian Deer
On day one of Dr Andrew Wakefield’s hearing for serious professional misconduct, the staff of the UK’s General Medical Council (GMC) took turns to read out ninety-three pages of charges…
Blog post — 22 Jan 2020
A beginner's guide to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy
With the release of The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel’s long-awaited sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, our resident Tudor nut Amanda Rayner has…
Blog post — 22 Jan 2020
Five reasons to reread Wolf Hall & Bring Up The Bodies
The Mirror and the Light, the long-awaited final novel of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, will be released on 3 March, 2020.
If you are new to the…
Review — 29 Feb 2020
The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
After fourteen attempts at starting this review for The Mirror & the Light, I had to stop and ask myself, ‘Why is this so difficult?’. I think the answer…
Review — 21 Oct 2019
Body Tourists by Jane Rogers
Mortality, fear of aging and the desire to be young again have always been popular topics for fiction (just think The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde). In Body…
Review — 23 Sep 2019
Bruny by Heather Rose
In 2017, Heather Rose won the Stella Prize for The Museum of Modern Love; a meditation on art and life in New York City. Her new book Bruny…
Review — 19 Aug 2019
The Girls by Chloe Higgins
I originally questioned the choice of title for this book as the words ‘girl/s’ are so commonly used in this context. I wondered if a different title could have been…
Review — 26 Mar 2018
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland
The challenge with reviewing The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland is to convey in only a few hundred words the stunning achievement of this debut author. Ringland…
Review — 29 Jan 2019
The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
Reading The Dreamers leading up to Christmas, I’ll admit that a book about people drifting into a seemingly peaceful and prolonged sleep had its appeal. This is, however, no fairytale…