I learned a new word today – sonder. It’s the realisation that each random passer-by is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. It’s a lovely word and feeling. We walk past people on the street and we know nothing about their lives, they don’t exist in full form to us the way that our friends and families do…
After the Crash
23 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
Time for a confession – I’m terrified of flying, I hate it with a passion. There are so many strange noises and bumps and dangers that I don’t understand and can’t control. I have recurring dreams where I either witness a plane crash or am on a plane which is taking off in the middle of a city centre…
The Equalizer
22 June 2015 by 2 Comments
I’m just about old enough to remember the Edward Woodward television programme, The Equalizer, a drama about a former intelligence operative who acts as a private avenger saving downtrodden New Yorkers from various evil-doers. For the late 80s the show was remarkably violent…
How I Lost You
19 June 2015 by 2 Comments
Imagine being told by your husband, medical staff, police and the courts that you have killed your baby – despite having no memory of the event, would you believe what you were told? Susan Webster was convicted of the post-natal depression related manslaughter of her 12-week old son Dylan…
The Fault in our Stars
17 June 2015 by 2 Comments
I’m a crier. I cry at films and TV shows all the time, I’ve even been known to cry at TV commercials (and not just the annual John Lewis advert designed to tug at the heartstrings and send you to the High Street). When I sat down to watch The Fault in Our Stars, a film about teenagers with cancer…
The Little Paris Bookshop
15 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
There’s something wonderful about books – they take us into a different world. It can be a world of romance or danger. It can be a past world or a completely alien world. Books can make us happy, or sad, or help to heal pain. The central character of Nina George’s novel The Little Paris Bookshop…
The Versions of Us
12 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
I’ve often wondered what would have happened with my life if I had attended the girls’ school that my mum wanted me to go to rather than the local comprehensive that I did. Would I have gone to college and met my best friend? Would I have studied law or medicine…
Hitler’s Forgotten Children
8 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
The Nazi obsession with racial purity is well known; their goal of an Aryan master race and their racial policies led to the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and the targeting of other racial and religious groups including Black Germans, gypsies, and physically and mentally disabled people…
The Killing of Bobbi Lomax
4 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
It is Hallowe’en 1983. Prom queen and teenage bride Bobbi Lomax lies dead on her front lawn, killed by a bomb placed by an unknown assailant. Just a few minutes later Peter Gudsen is also killed, a nail from a bomb piercing his brain. Within a few more minutes, a third explosion…
It’s Not Me It’s You
2 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
I try not to judge a book on its first few pages, I like to get into the narrative before I make any judgments. Of course there are some books where this doesn’t work – I couldn’t read more than the first four or five pages of Anne Enright’s The Gathering…