Book Club

Welcome to our book club! Here you can find our book reviews, please select a book below to read our review, keep coming back too as we are always adding more! Of course, if you have recently read a book and you would like to write a review, please email it to us and we will add it to our book club!

Review - Past Mortem by Ben Elton

Review - Friends Like These by Danny Wallace

Review - Air & Angels by Susan Hill

Review - Road by Jim Cartwright

(Please note your own reviews on books or authors are subject to editorial discretion).

Review - Past Mortem by Ben Elton

Having belatedly discovered the genious that is Ben Elton last Summer, in an effort to catch up with the rest of the UK I decided it was time to become further acquainted with some of his titles. If Past Mortem was a film, I would have to had looked away at the gory bits and believe me in this title there is no shortage of horrifyingly gruesome murders throughout the book. Presented as a crime thriller the book is lacking slightly on the comedy that Elton is so famous for. All the same there is a great deal of mystery and suspense throughout this clever story that meant once I had started reading I couldn't stop, even though I had to skim read through the grisly sections.

The story develops after an extremely unusual murder takes place signalling the demise of a much hated man in London. In a seemingly separate sub-plot the lead character, the agreeable and charasmatic Detective Inspector Ed Newson is trying to 'find himself' through his past, reaquainting himself with old friends and foes through social networking site Friends Reunited. As more weird murders occur, the investigation and Newson's personal life meet head on in an exciting climax of events.

This story is about more than just disturbing murders and a 'whodunnit' resolution, it touches upon some more serious day to day issues that could potentially affect many of such as bullying and the dangers of social networking sites which are now part of many of our daily lives. If you can deal with the blood and gore then its definately worth a read, but it is not for the faint hearted.

By Katie Ramsay

Review - Friends Like These by Danny Wallace

Another laugh out loud contribution to the British comedy literary scene by the hero that is Danny Wallace, Friends Like These is written by an altogether far more grown up and mature Danny Wallace...or perhaps not. Approaching the big 3-0, Danny is panicking. His life is passing him by and he is now married, he has a mortgage and numerous 'display cushions' in his lounge.

By chance, Wallace discovers an old address book from his childhood which he feels sure holds the key to him retaining his youth and being able to move on into adulthood without fear. Tracking down old friends with addresses fifteen years out of date, is not surprisingly, difficult and before you know it, Wallace is off galavanting to the other side of the world looking for a man he last saw as a boy 20 years ago. Where as most of us would make do with a simple facebook friend request and be done with it, Danny Wallace decides he wants to personally find and reaquaint himself with each person in his age old address book before he reaches his thirtieth birthday.

Call it one last rite of passage before he can happiliy live as a 'grown up'. Undoubtably hilarious, as with Wallace's previous titles, he turns normal and relatively mundane activites into a riveting page turner with his humourous anecdotes and escapades.

By Katie Ramsay

Review - Air & Angels by Susan Hill

This story, published in the early 1990s,and set much earlier in the century, is eloquently written by Susan Hill,who has been described as one of Britain's finest novelists.

In this work the author evokes powerfully the emotions experienced by a wide-ranging cross-section of protagonists; chiefly focussing on the agonies and turmoil of an awakening and obsessive first love which threatens to shatter the ordered life of a middle-aged academic and the innocent teenage girl who quite unwittingly so enthralls him; The story has an almost aching innocence of its own.

Landscape and place are also beautifully observed in this book; the sapping dead heat of India contrasting well with the blossoming freshness of English springtime; the pristine elegance of an old English university echoing the grandeur of a wealthy residential district in Calcutta.

It is a serious-minded book, poignant and moving, and justifiably, in my opinion, very well received by critics when first published.

By Sandra Pegram

Review - Road by Jim Cartwright

In 1986, a young, aspiring playwright, Jim Cartwright, wrote a socio-political play, Road, evoking the controversial style of the kitchen drama of the sixties. It was brilliantly written, the language being vibrant, raw and refreshing, beautifully blending poetry, including extracts from Shakespeare, with an aggressive, hard hitting contemporary style. It was at once side-splittingly funny and heart-wrenchingly tragic – a truly great piece of theatre. Road was later to be acknowledged as one of the most exciting, of-the-moment pieces of theatre of its decade and is now a cult classic; an emblem of the eighties.

Road invites its audience to experience a snippet of life in the lowest depths of the Thatcher era. It is intended as a protest against trickle down economics by representing the underclass at the bottom of the heap, ''where things slide to but don't drop off.'' The audience are taken in promenade style on a journey down a road in a grim, industrial suburb of Bolton, Lancashire. As we travel from kitchen to sitting room, from bedroom to pub, we meet the inhabitants who tell us their stories and show us their lives as they prepare for a night out. Mostly unemployed and ignored, they desperately scrounge an escape in booze or birds.

The message of the piece is clear. Jim Cartright used his play as a vehicle to expose the truth of a much ignored underclass emerging in Britain at the time. This play is not designed for audiences to pity and then go home and forget about it. We are not supposed to believe that the characters are real. Instead we are supposed to think about a neglected sector of society and, you never know, maybe even change it. To give a voice, albeit a theatrical one, to the underclass – a class otherwise neglected in the media.

By Nicola Furnell