schopflin's reviews
719 reviews

I was disappointed by this book. She had a good story to tell but I found her writing style clunky and full of clichés. It may have been a choice to reflect her awkward teenage self. I would still recommend it as I learned a lot from it about the Chinese experience in Britain. 

When I first read The Warden I absolutely loved it. I thought it was a perfect little gem and a lovely story of old age. This time I really struggled, first with the amount of time we spend with I adequate men, and secondly, with the rather tedious perambulations around the press and the church. And I didn't have as much sympathy with Mr Harding. I don't think there's less of foolish men or dissertations on These Times in his other books, but they are balanced by more chapters featuring intelligent women. I wouldn't want to put any Trollope fans off The Warden, but I wouldn't start here. 

I got off to a bad start with this book as one of its central conceits is jokes resulting from audio transcription errors. But one of the major ones is all wrong because of the emphasis. I did give it a really good go, and I did like the central character, but not enough to battle on through. 

I absolutely loved this. It's in what seems to be a new type of writing where the very essence of telling stories is examined. It's beautifully done and I feel I am familiar with Funder's version of Eileen while also accepting that other versions might exist. 

Insightful funny and interesting. Overall writes a lot about walking as a woman and I must admit I wouldn't feel safe doing what she did. But she proves that female-perspective psychogeography can be a thing. 

I enjoyed this, but have so many problems with it. It's written in a slangy and gossipy style and not always well. There are some editorial howlers. There's a fair amount of unthinking colonialist racism and snobbery that I think creep in because the author is so besotted with the world she writes about. However, it shows signs of deep research, and I did get a good sense of the woman at the centre of it and her world. 

This is well-written but it's clear from the start that none of it's going to end well and all the characters are deeply unsympathetic. I probably read to about as long as it should have been ..

I have a lot of Holocaust memoir in my collection and it's interesting to read the 'grandchild' books that are emerging. I think this is a fascinating and well-told examination of family heritage. The author is honest about his ambivalent reasons for pursuing his family property and, like life, there are no neat endings. 

I'm not going to pretend that international law makes easy reading, but if anyone can connect it to the human story, it's Philippe Sands. This was a fascinating tale, well told and highly evocative of place as well as an under the bonnet look at international courts. 

A birthday treat for me, loaned from a friend. I really like the Harbinder books and this was highly enjoyable. There was lots of recognisable social commentary, much of it very funny. In common with the first book, but unlike the second one, the 'plot' characters were mostly fairly unsympathetic. But I get the impression that in the absence of Ruth and Nelson, we are going to build up the characters from 'West Kensington Station'.