Reviews - Alan Johnson: This Boy and Mr. Postman

Alan Johnson
This Boy: A Memoir of Childhood (4*)
Please, Mr. Postman: a Memoir (3*)

Alan Johnson is well-known as a politician but his memoirs are more social than political, and rather good. I wish we could be confident that someone from his ordinary and actually rather deprived background could still achieve similar things today.


Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

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Reviews - L. P. Hartley: The Go-Between and Graeme Simsion: The Rosie Project

L. P. Hartley
The Go-Between (5*)
Graeme Simsion
The Rosie Project (4*)

Leslie Poles Hartley's The Go-Between is the novel that begins with the well known line "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

One might imagine that I identify with the teller of the story, a man in his mid-sixties who remembers a particular summer in his childhood that had a profoundly damaging effect upon the rest of his life, but thankfully I don't consider myself to be very much like him at all. It's an impressive book though.

Actually I identify far more closely with the protagonist of Graeme Simsion's highly amusing book, The Rosie Project, because I am pretty sure I fall somewhere well along the same psychological spectrum, as you might guess from my obsession with objects and details.

Key to star ratings: 5*** wonderful and hope to read again, 5* wonderful, 4* enjoyed it a lot and would recommend, 3* enjoyable/interesting, 2* didn't enjoy, 1* gave up.

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