Alex the Book Reviewer

This is not a book that you could describe as enjoyable and I’ve enjoyed reading all the Irving books I’ve read (New Hampshire, Owen Meany, Garp and even the weird hand transplant one!). I'm not saying it's bad, it's not. It's just certainly not fun to read. It's about the people, of course, all of Irving's books are character driven. You think it's all heading to a particular point and then it gets to that point and brushes past it and gets on with the tale without making any kind of big deal about the huge moment you could feel coming, and thought was going to change the entire trajectory. The context of this one is unwanted pregnancies, orphans, and abortions. And then love and family and relationships as always. Wilbur Larch is a doctor. As a very young doctor, in the early 1900s, someone he refuses someone an abortion and then they die from a botched attempt at which point he realises that he needs to provide a service and save lives. He opens ...

  I'd never heard of the book or the author, but it was on my reading pile, it's bright green so it kept catching my eye, and it has a cute puppy on the front so, naturally, I gave it a go. And I was happily surprised.  It's about an ever-so-slightly unhinged young man who is on an environmental crusade. He sees someone throw his litter out of the car window on the highway and follows him in order to teach him a lesson. However, the litterbug turns out to be a big-time fixer working on a housing development project which is going to wipe out a nature reserve island. This, clearly, requires greater action. So, he (the unhinged young man) steals his (the litterbug fixer) dog and this leads to one of my favourite ever passages, as follows: " The dog was having a grand time. That's the thing about being a Labrador retriever - you were born for fun. Seldom was your loopy free-wheeling mind cluttered by contemplation, and never at all by somber worry; every day...

  Tony got me this book because she always drops little things into the Sewing Bee like, "when I was at a party with Bowie" and "when I rode a motorbike naked" and I kept saying how much I'd like to read more about her life and I was not disappointed. She's surprisingly punk really! If you watch the show but never listen to anything she says the book will really surprise you. She seems like such a little square quiet lady on GBSB but she was pretty ground-breaking in her day. She comes from a very middle-class, happy family. The second of five children, she went to a catholic boarding school with nuns, who were very nice and not at all like the movies will have you believe. It's quite nice to read a biography of someone without a deep dark traumatic past! She went to art college in Cambridge in 1965 and then St Martin's in London, before setting up a shop Swanky Modes, selling their own designs, with some friends. She spent a lot of her time ...