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The Pale King$29.99 add to cart

Book of the Day, David Foster Wallace's The Pale King. David Foster Wallace left us such a mystery when he died, at his own hand, while at work on The Pale King. David Foster Wallace is considered by some to be the best American writer of a generation. When the unfinished fragments that make up The Pale King were published posthumously it was reviewed everywhere, including, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The New York Times Book Review, The Globe and Mail, and our newsletter the May June edition of The Bookseller has a story about David Foster Wallace, click here for a sneak peak.

 

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Started Early, Took My Dog$24.95 add to cart

With favourable reviews from The New York Times, Salon, and The Wall Street Journal. I had to read Kate Atkinson's Started Early, Took My Dog.

Kate Atkinson did not disappoint. In the reviews she is praised for her plotting, but she's also at work on deeper levels and Started Early, Took My Dog becomes an extended and multi-faceted exploration of parenting and love, and of the ways people fail to protect children. This could turn out bleak, but Atkinson's characters are well crafted, and their depth, and humour save it.

For an audio extract of Started Early, Took My Dog, click here.

Diana Wynne Jones, author of the Chrestomanci series and Howl's Moving Castle has passed away.

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The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (DAW Books)

On my night table at the moment is The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. It's the first installment of The Kingkiller Chronicles, with the second book of the fantasy trilogy due out in August. The protagonist is Kvothe (pronounced "Quothe"), and we first meet him as the owner of a middle-of-nowhere tavern. He is, it transpires, a legend, trying to live out his days quietly. Tracked down by a historian, he reluctantly agrees to tell his story, and the bulk of the novel then consists of his narration, beginning with his childhood as part of family of travelling players, and moving to his life at University, now a student Arcanist of precocious talent.

My bare-bones synopsis here cannot possibly do justice to the richness of Rothfuss' novel. His world-building is meticulous, with every detail in place, from the monetary system to the names of the days of the ten-day week, and he unveils this bustling, living, breathing world so naturally to the reader that one's first encounter with it feels like a journey home. His prose, meanwhile, is elegant and literate without being pretentious, and his storytelling moving and grave without forgetting to be funny. The book is a triumph, and the wait for the next two volumes is going to be a long one.

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