Nige recommends another overlooked literary gem, available for a mere penny... After I'd read Philip Larkin's A Girl In Winter, it was a natural step to read another Barbara Pym. Larkin was a big Pym fan and, along with Lord David Cecil, responsible for the revival in her fortunes after a fallow period ... Read More...
Novels
Nige reads one of the great poet's rare attempts at prose... I don't know what kept me so long away from Philip Larkin's novels - heaven knows I've been reading his poetry long enough. I think I lazily assumed that his two published novels, both written in his early 20s, were juvenile ... Read More...
Nige recommends a new novel set during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam... Now, I'm not one for log-rolling - still less, nepotistic log-rolling - nor am I generally one for new fiction, but I must tell you that this is a seriously good novel, and one that's very hard to put ... Read More...
Having successfully revived the novelist David Karp, Steerforth champions another undeservedly forgotten author... It isn't easy to find a more obscure novelist than David Karp, but I think I've succeeded. A visit to Camilla's Bookshop in Eastbourne yielded this novel, published in 1961: Yes, that is Larry Olivier on the front cover ... Read More...
Jonathan Law continues his exploration of that curious and very funny side-alley of literature: the library of non-existent books... Victorian literature has nothing to compare with the ribald, fantastical book lists of Rabelais, Swift, or Donne. And yet the era made its own singular contribution to the history of the phantom ... Read More...
Steerforth discovers David Karp, a cerebral novelist whose name has unaccountably vanished from the literary canon... Until I found this novel in the cavernous basement of Camilla's Bookshop in Eastbourne, I had never heard of David Karp. I can't remember why One caught my eye, but as soon as I read ... Read More...
Steerforth discovers Warwick Deeping, once a prolific writer of bestsellers, now all but forgotten (and in this case, perhaps deservedly so)... In his wonderful essay Bookshop Memories, Orwell lamented that the authors who were most popular with his customers were Ethel M Dell and Warwick Deeping. I didn't recognise the first ... Read More...
Irivine Welsh's novels contain some of the densest slang writing in fiction. Jonathon 'Mr Slang' Green ventures into the dark side of Scottish language... It is a good thing that Eric Partridge was spared Irvine Welsh. Not because the former was a bad lexicographer nor the latter a bad writer, but ... Read More...
Dabbler editor Brit has written a piece about The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald here - and in a fine example of great dabbleminds thinking alike, later recalled that we'd featured the book on this site back in 2010. Here's ZMKC's 1p book review... The Bookshop, by Penelope Fitzgerald (available at 1p here) ... Read More...
Resuming our 1p Book Review feature, guest contributor and longtime Dabbler reader Joey Denham recommends a recent anti-western novel... Occasionally I’ll pick up a book because of its cover. It’s only natural. I did this a few years ago with Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers (2011), and again later with The Flame Alphabet (2012) by ... Read More...