Jill Maclean
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How to Describe the Richness of this Debut Novel?

How to Describe the Richness of this Debut Novel?

by jillmaclean | Jun 7, 2022 | Book Review, Novels I’ve Read

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an American journalist and award-winning non-fiction writer. The WaterDancer, about slavery in the 1850s, is his debut novel, and it has it all: momentum, density, ahost of interesting and well-developed characters, an impressive level of research...
Why another memoir about trench warfare? This one is written by a private.

Why another memoir about trench warfare? This one is written by a private.

by jillmaclean | Mar 7, 2022 | Book Review, Novels I’ve Read

The following link gives the context for Old Soldiers Never Die by Frank Richards, of the Royal Welch Fusiliers (Parthian Library of Wales, 2016) www.walesartsreview.org/some-words-on-frank-richards/  Phil Carradice’s BBC blog, largely biographical, describes how...
She stands out from the herd and the herd turns on her

She stands out from the herd and the herd turns on her

by jillmaclean | Jan 7, 2022 | Book Review, Novels I’ve Read

Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch, by the Canadian-American author Rivka Galchen, is an historical novel that is all-too relevant for our modern world. There are several excellent reviews of the novel (Harper Perennial, 2021) and I recommend the following link for...
Playing With Time: The Essex Serpent, Reality is Not What it Seems & Arcadia

Playing With Time: The Essex Serpent, Reality is Not What it Seems & Arcadia

by jillemaclean | Nov 30, 2018 | Book Review, Books Other Than Novels, Novels I’ve Read

Is one of the pitfalls of being a writer that you read differently? In the last couple of weeks, I’ve read Sarah Perry’s historical novel The Essex Serpent, two-thirds of Carlo Rovelli’s Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity – non-fiction,...
Days Without End by Sebastian Barry Almost Wrecked Me

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry Almost Wrecked Me

by jillemaclean | Nov 15, 2018 | Book Review, Novels I’ve Read

If The Dream of Scipio stirred me up, Days Without End almost wrecked me…what is it about a story that seizes you by the throat and won’t let go? First, a digression. After I heard Michael Ondaatje and Linda Spalding read in Halifax, I reread The English Patient and...
Here’s a Novel That Stirred Me Up. What More Can We Ask of Any Book?

Here’s a Novel That Stirred Me Up. What More Can We Ask of Any Book?

by jillemaclean | Sep 15, 2018 | Book Review, Novels I’ve Read

A friend gave me a copy of Iain Pears’s The Dream of Scipio several months ago because it’s set in Provence, which I’m visiting this year, and it’s partly about the plague of the mid-1300s, a century that has me hooked. I took over a week to read it. In it, the...
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Recent Posts

  • How to Describe the Richness of this Debut Novel?
  • Does each reader create a different book?
  • Why another memoir about trench warfare? This one is written by a private.
  • Do you agree that “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers…”?
  • She stands out from the herd and the herd turns on her
  • Playing With Time: The Essex Serpent, Reality is Not What it Seems & Arcadia
  • Days Without End by Sebastian Barry Almost Wrecked Me
  • Remembrance
  • What Can Art Do? What Can Art Not Do?
  • How do you write a serious book without your reader’s eyes glazing over?
  • Here’s a Novel That Stirred Me Up. What More Can We Ask of Any Book?
  • A Spin-off From Shakespeare: Can Art Be Transformative?
  • “To be or not to be?” OR, “Is there method in my madness?”
  • Research = Digging
  • Book Reviews: Do you read them before you read the book or afterwards?
  • Indian Horse: A Much-Needed Book For a Time of Truth And Reconciliation
  • Books That Demand to be Read
  • Do You Have a Reading List? Add This Book!
  • Have You Ever Thrown Infuriating Books at the Wall?
  • Why are books oblong?

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