The moon is bright tonight, illuminating the ripples on the surface of the lake. The waves lap gently against the boat as the water settles. It was over pretty quickly really; he didn’t struggle or make much noise. It wasn’t my first time, after all. I head back to the shore and prepare for the inevitable fuss. I splash water onto the blanket before wrapping it round my shoulders. I shake out my hair and concentrate for a moment until…
We’re in Sweden, in the small town of Gavrik. It’s the middle of winter, in the depths of the forest, and there’s barely a sliver of daylight. It’s cold, and the trees are cloaked in a heavy blanket of snow. But none of this can deter Tuva Moodyson, the deaf reporter we all got to know and love in Will Dean’s first book, Dark Pines. Tuva is a kick-ass character, down-to-earth, slightly flawed and just utterly human. And she’s determined…
I’m sitting at the gate, waiting for boarding to start. Well, I’m waiting for the plane to arrive so that boarding can start. In a truly wonderful feat of organisation, the gate number was called before the plane got here, so now I’m sitting on my suitcase, one of hundreds of sardines trapped in an overcrowded tin. Every flight is overbooked, tempers are frayed. Too many people don’t want to be here, don’t want to be going ‘home’. I haven’t…
The Chalk Man has been on my radar for a long time, with lots of bloggers and readers and other writers shouting about it on Twitter. So I was very pleased to find a copy in my local library and to finally sit down and read it over the Christmas holiday. It’s a great package, with a very eerie cover and probably the best spine I’ve ever seen (there’s no title or author’s name, only a bunch of creepy chalk…
‘While she talked, I hummed in my mind so I didn’t have to hear what she said. I hummed “Blue Danube” till its blueness began to cloak my thoughts, but even this blueness wasn’t enough to drown out the whole story.’ Let me start by saying that Mischling is without doubt one of the best books I read in 2018. I picked it up in Oxfam a while ago, drawn in by the blurb on the back cover (I wrote…
This post was first written in October 2017, and was inspired by a Nordic literature event at the Southbank Centre in London. In October 2017, I went to an event at the Southbank Centre called ‘Dangerous Desires’, featuring Norwegian writer Hanne Ørstavik and Finnish writers Kati Hiekkapelto and Jussi Valtonen. Part of the Nordic Matters series of events that has been taking place all year, and part of the annual Southbank Literature Festival too, this particular panel talk looked at…
I first wrote this post in 2015, after completing my MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia. Nearly four years on, I feel this article may still be of some relevance today, so I am sharing it once again on my new website in the hope that my experiences might prove useful or inspiring to someone out there! After just over eighteen months of working in a translation agency, I decided to shift my focus to literary…
The Darkness by Ragnar Jónasson (translated by Victoria Cribb) is a gripping crime novel set in Iceland, in and around Reykjavik. Ragnar Jónasson has a great talent for transporting his readers to Iceland, using the weather and landscape to set the scene, and this book does not disappoint. His protagonist Hulda is a 64-year-old detective who has suffered from sexism within the force throughout her career, and is now being pushed out ahead of retirement to make way for younger…
I picked up Into the Water not knowing quite what to expect – I loved The Girl on the Train, but was aware that many of the Amazon reviews didn’t rate this one quite as highly. Hawkins’ second novel tells the story of sisters Jules and Nel, who have a complicated relationship. Just days after Jules ignores Nel’s phone call, Nel turns up dead in the (fairly creepy) village in which they both grew up. Jules reluctantly goes back to…
The Guilty One is a gripping and emotional read. It has a duel timeline narrative and is set both in the present day as solicitor Daniel takes on a new case, defending an eleven-year-old boy accused of murder, and in the past as flashbacks tell of Danny’s own troubled past and difficult childhood. Danny has to focus on saving the young Sebastian’s future whilst facing his own memories and coming to terms with his complicated relationship with Minnie, the woman…