Author Archives: John Sloan

Lacey, Catherine. The Mobius Book. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2025. F; 8/25. This book is well beyond ordinary. I enjoyed it and found it serious and agreed with many of the abstract speculations. The mobius metaphor seems to … Continue reading →

August 2025. The name translates as “the barge” and the restaurant is on the upper floor of what was I think previously a gas and provisions float for boats. It’s open for dinner Thursday through Monday I believe only seasonally, … Continue reading →

Bellow, Saul. More Die of Heartbreak. William Morrow, New York 1987. F;7/25. I decided to read this novel after reading Martin Amis’s apotheosis of Bellow. It’s Bellow’s 10th out of 14 or so novels and because I read The Adventures … Continue reading →

Amis, Martin. Money, A Suicide Note. Vintage, London, 1984 (F;6/25) and Experience, a Memoir. Miramax, London, 2000. (Mem;6/25) A dear friend who loves reading suggested Amis to me as a wonderful writer. I looked up general opinions of his fiction … Continue reading →

Kehlmann, Daniel. The Director. Simon and Schuster, New York 2025. F;5/25. This historic novel deals with the creative and political life of famous Austrian film director G W Pabst. In 2020 Kehlmann published Tyll, another novel which impressed me and … Continue reading →

Handler, Daniel. And then? And then? What else? Liveright, New York, 1924. Memoir; 5/25. I was hard-pressed to categorize this. It’s a memoir but also a kind of rambling apologia for Handler’s life and writing. It wasn’t available on Kindle … Continue reading →

Anderson-Wheeler Claire. The Gatsby Gambit. Penguin Random House New York 2025. F; 4/25. This new murder mystery is based on Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, similarly to but more directly than the way A Thousand Acres by Smiley and The Hours … Continue reading →

Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. Scribner’s New York 1926. F; 4/25. This is the first time I’ve read this but I remember the bulls in Pamplona in the 1957 movie with Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner, which I saw … Continue reading →

April 2025 Me just back from a month in France Robin and I spent two days and nights here debriefing. This food review will include the accommodation. The harbour house built in around 1920 was a family home, taken over … Continue reading →

de Kretser, Michelle. Theory and Practice. Sort Of Books, London, 2025. F; 3/25. Taken from the periodical Book Marks which is usually in my opinion vitiated toward activist politics I liked this novel a lot anyway. Book Marks choosing it … Continue reading →