Book review: Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

No Comments

Utopia Avenue book cover

Like many people I discovered David Mitchell through his bestselling novel Cloud Atlas. I went back and read his first two books and declared myself a big fan. I bought his next few books as hardbacks on release and loved them. But then after 2014 I for some reason didn’t pick up his next two novels – until now.

Looking back at my notes from the talk Mitchell gave in Bristol in 2014, he said he was writing “a book largely set in 1960s London and New York, due for publication in 2016”. Well that surely has to be Utopia Avenue, which was finally published in 2020. And which I finally read last month.

This is a novel about a fictional band called Utopia Avenue in 1960s London (mostly). They’re a cross-genre hybrid formed by a visionary manager, Levon Frankland, bringing together musicians he’s individually impressed by. Which at first seems like a plan so misguidedly hopeful it can’t possibly work. As these five strangers gradually become a team, life throws curveballs that could end the dream before it’s begun.

Each chapter centres around the writing of a particular song, told from the perspective of the song’s writer. All the band members and their manager get a turn – though two of the band do the majority of the writing and therefore get more chapters. It’s an interesting way to tell the story, though I did occasionally want more from the perspectives that were largely missing.

Continue reading “Book review: Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell”

April 2026 reading round-up

No Comments

My reading last month was boosted by the Easter long weekend, sunny evenings in the garden and a short holiday in Bannau Brycheiniog (the Brecon Beacons).

We had fantastic luck with the weather considering it was a holiday in the UK in April. It was gorgeously sunny and warm while still early enough in the year that the UV was only high for brief periods each day. Which meant I could be outside for hours at a time without triggering a lupus flare. Cue 3-4 hour walks in peaceful countryside with picnics or pub lunches. Then getting back to our holiday cottage mid-afternoon to sit in the garden with books, wine and snacks.

On holiday we stumbled across Hy Brasail, a strange house that looks like a hybrid of ordinary Victorian house and an Italian villa. Which is basically exactly what it is. There is some mystery surrounding it, but what seems agreed on is that it was owned by a local lawyer, Mr James, in 1912. He made some quirky additions to the building after he went on holiday to Italy. He may have fallen in love with a contessa and promised to build her a house reminiscent of her Tuscan childhood. She may even have lived there with him. Though more likely she broke his heart and never came to Wales.

Continue reading “April 2026 reading round-up”

TV review: Gimbap and Onigiri

No Comments

Gimbap and Onigiri poster

I’m a sucker for a romance based around food, and I love Korean and Japanese food, so Gimbap and Onigiri (TV Tokyo 2026) seemed like a good bet. A Korean woman studying in Tokyo strikes up a friendship – and then romance – with a Japanese man who cooks at a small diner. They bond over food, and the relationship helps them both move past stumbling blocks in their lives.

Rin (played by Kang Hye-won) is studying for a master’s in animation but at the start of her final year, she is falling behind her peers and struggling to find somewhere to live. Her mother is nagging her to move back to Korea and work as an art teacher but Rin dearly wants to stay in Japan. Though it’s unclear why as she seems lonely, with only one friend in Tokyo.

Taiga (Eiji Akaso) is clearly a good cook and is valued by his employer, though he’s had no formal training. His family are hard on him about what they see as an unskilled part-time job. But while working he’s happy and popular, if a little too shy to see how liked he is.

So they’re both insecure, and working unsociable hours that make it hard to have much of a life outside work/university. When Rin stumbles on the diner and they start talking, it seems like a perfect match.

Continue reading “TV review: Gimbap and Onigiri”

Book review: Christopher and His Kind 1929–1939 by Christopher Isherwood

Christopher and His Kind 1929–1939 by Christopher Isherwood book coverI really enjoy Christopher Isherwood’s books and have always been curious to know more about him. Though most of his novels are loosely based on incidents in his own life, they are of course fictionalised. But it turns out that in 1976 Isherwood published Christopher and His Kind 1929–1939 – a memoir that revisits that 10-year period in his life and retells it as a, well, tell-all.

The period of 1929–1939 is when Isherwood lived mostly in continental Europe – after his childhood and early years in England, before his emigration to the USA where he remained until his death. He spent the first four years of this decade in Berlin – a time famously memorialised in his novel Goodbye to Berlin, which formed the basis of the play I Am A Camera and later the musical Cabaret. While living in Berlin he wrote and saw the publication of The Memorial, which was his second novel but the first to achieve some success.

Isherwood was gay and out to his friends and family for pretty much his whole life. He socialised with fellow queer intellectuals and lived openly with his partners. But he didn’t write about this aspect of his life publicly until the 1970s. Understandably, as California – where he had settled – did not decriminalise homosexuality until 1975.

Christopher and His Kind is gossipy and confessional, with some interesting quirks. For one, Isherwood describes his younger self in the third person, as though this is just another novel with a main character called Christopher. Which would maybe make sense if this was a straightforward narrative otherwise. But Isherwood’s future self injects commentary and later memories using first-person “I”. He also repeatedly compares this telling of events to the versions in his novels (and subsequent plays and films). Which is informative, if a little overly defensive at times of his past self’s decisions.

Continue reading “Book review: Christopher and His Kind 1929–1939 by Christopher Isherwood”

March 2026 reading round-up

A fairly uneventful month – which is maybe better than the alternative. We went to see Project Hail Mary at the cinema, which was very entertaining and does kinda make me want to read the Andy Weir book. And we watched the film of The Thin Man – accompanied by martinis, of course – which is great fun and if anything makes more of the role of Asta the dog than the book did.

The garden is full of flowers and the park is full of wild garlic. Even my house plants are in flower, one of them after two years of no buds at all. That’s exciting.

This coming weekend is Easter, which I will as is now traditional spend mostly reading books and eating chocolate. Happy Easter to all who celebrate!

Continue reading “March 2026 reading round-up”

Book review: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

We Have Always Lived in the Castle book cover

I have a new book club and our first read was We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, which it turns out is excellent book club fodder.

This is a classic for a reason – a deliciously creepy southern gothic tale packed full of mystery. First published in 1962, it feels like it could be set much earlier – until the occasional car reminds us it must be the 20th century.

Mary Katherine (Merricat) Blackwood and her older sister Constance live in a big house on the outskirts of a village with their very ill uncle Julian. Outcasts and subjects of gossip since the rest of their family died six years earlier, their lives are shrinking and filled with superstition. Yet they are, in a way, happy.

Continue reading “Book review: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson”

Book review: Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

1 Comment

Ripe book cover

A few years ago I joined an online book club run by a local bookshop. I struggled to keep on top of the reading and had to cancel my membership, guiltily putting aside the last few books to read later. Every book choice was thought provoking and came from a small publisher so it was totally up my street; it was just the wrong timing for me.

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter was one of those book club picks, which I’ve now finally read. It’s an intense satire of Silicon Valley. I both loved it and found it stressful to read.

On paper, Cassie is living the dream, with an apartment in a nice San Francisco neighbourhood and an impressive-sounding job at a unicorn start-up. But her depression is a black hole that threatens to overwhelm her; work hours and pressure are overwhelming; and her finances are precarious. She’s taking a lot of coke and plastering on a fake smile to survive.

Continue reading “Book review: Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter”

February 2026 reading round-up

The Lite Series

Rain, rain, so much rain. I can’t remember a previous February that was so wet. So we have largely hibernated this month. I read a lot. We watched a lot of films. We even squeezed in some art, courtesy of Bristol Light Festival.

I ended the month celebrating Chinese New Year at Bristol City Museum; going out for a delicious meal with Tim at Box-E; and hearing the news that the US, Israel and Iran are at war.

Books-wise, a couple of these I picked because February is LGBT+ History Month in the UK. And three were for book clubs. Most were good reads, but a couple were truly excellent: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld.

Continue reading “February 2026 reading round-up”

Book review: The Stories of English by David Crystal

The Stories of English book cover

Way back when Tim and I were first dating, we bonded over our interest in English language and he recommended I read David Crystal. Crystal is a linguist who has been studying and writing books about the English language since 1964. He lectured for decades at the University of Reading, which is where both Tim and I went, though sadly he was not there during our time. Crystal is rightly beloved as someone who is incredibly knowledgable, does important original research, and is able to make his field completely fascinating to the lay reader.

So I read a few of Crystal’s books 20-odd years ago, loved them and yet somehow his bestseller The Stories of English sat on my TBR for, well, 20 years. I finally picked it up last year and was reminded how great Crystal is. I was constantly quoting bits to Tim and our friends. That said, this book is denser than I remember the other Crystal books I’ve read having been and it took me a few months to get through.

This book is about the development of the English language, from the origins of Old English in the 5th century CE to the effects of the Internet on modern English. Crystal’s thesis is that this is not one single story, but many overlapping stories. And there is not, and never was, one single English language – it has always been multifarious. Which is a thesis I can get behind.

Continue reading “Book review: The Stories of English by David Crystal”

Book review: Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

Monkey Grip book cover

Tim is a fan of Helen Garner and has been telling me to read her for ages so I finally gave her a chance. As I should have known, I completely agree that she is excellent.

I didn’t want to start in the same place Tim did. Garner’s most famous book is This House of Grief, a true crime story about the murder of three children. It is apparently stunningly well written but I don’t think I will ever feel able to read that.

Monkey Grip was her first novel, based on her own life in Melbourne in the 1970s. The degree to which it is or is not fictionalized has caused Garner some negative press over the decades since its publication. But as she points out in this essay, even if she did just edit her own diaries and change all the names – she wrote those diaries in the first place. This is still original writing by her. And it really is original.

Continue reading “Book review: Monkey Grip by Helen Garner”