Book Reviews

“This is it. Her head was strangely clear despite the blood filling up her nose and mouth. An inch from her eye, the floor of the toilet was that kind of speckled plastic you got in public buildings, the dots …

“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.” The same could be not be said …

“The Kid had taken a bus north from Seattle and stood outside studying the bar for a long time, weighing the options.” The significance of this opening sentence is underpinned by the three final ominous words; by virtue of the irreversible choices …

“The safest way to write a diary was to imagine Stalin reading every word.”   A foreboding opening sentence, and the prevailing thread for the entire story. Preceding the events of Child 44 throughout the first fifty pages, the reader discovers how our …

“I’d been to Wilton’s hall before. I would have been seven or eight at the time, and somehow Aunt Cissy persuaded Mama to allow me a trip to the pantomime. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves it was, and as …