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Tara Hanks

~ Author of 'The Mmm Girl' and 'Wicked Baby'

Tara Hanks

Tag Archives: A Year in Books

2025: A Year in Books

15 Sunday Feb 2026

Posted by marina72 in Art and Photography, Books, Fiction, Non-Fiction

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2025, A Year in Books, Alba de Céspedes, Allegra Goodman, Andrew Miller, Another Man in the Street, Barbara Windsor, British Blonde, Carol White, Caroline Fraser, Caryl Phillips, Celia Dale, Crime Fiction, Crooked Cross, Daniel Kehlmann, Darryl W. Bullock, Diana Dors, Emma Donoghue, Eric Tucker, Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, G.W. Pabst, Gabriele Tergit, Germany, Havoc, Isola, Italy, Joe Meek, Julie Christie, Louise Brooks, Love and Fury, Lynda Nead, Murderland, Noah Eaton, Other People, Pauline Boty, Rebecca Wait, Rickard Sisters, Ruth Ellis, Saint of the Narrows Street, Sally Carson, Shadow Ticket, The Director, The Effingers, The Harrow, The Land in Winter, The Paris Express, The Secret Painter, There's No Turning Back, This Slavery, Thomas Pynchon, William Boyle

I read Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, The Crying of Lot 49, for my American Literature module at university – and like most of the books I studied back then, I haven’t returned to it in thirty years. But after seeing Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, I started thinking maybe Pynchon wasn’t just another of those great white males I generally avoid like the plague. And that I might even enjoy reading one of his books, if the same kind of mayhem conjured on the screen could also be found within its pages.

In what has been a good year for fiction (if not our lived experience), Shadow Ticket was my most anticipated read of 2025. Continue reading →

2024: A Year in Books

03 Friday Jan 2025

Posted by marina72 in Art and Photography, Books, Fiction, History, Non-Fiction

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2024, A Year in Books, Alex Grant, Amy Helen Bell, Avril Horner, Barbara Comyns, Bastard Out of Carolina, Bristol, Brooklyn, Carol Ann Lee, Civil War, Cold War, Colm Toibin, Dorothy Allison, Dust Bowl, Edna O'Brien, Eilis Lacey, Gayl Jones, Highland Clearances, Huckleberry Finn, Ingrid Persaud, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Irish Literature, James, Jayne Ann Phillips, John Steinbeck, John Vassall, Kate Summerscale, Kevin Barry, Lancashire Witches, London, Long Island, Marc Kristal, Mark Twain, Mrs Gulliver, Native American Literature, Night Watch, Novella, Paula Spencer, Pauline Boty, Pendle Witches, Percival Everett, Pop Art, Profumo Affair, Pulitzer Prize, Reginald Christie, Rillington Place, Roddy Doyle, Sam Selvon, Sanora Babb, Scotland, Short Stories, Slavery, Sunjeev Sahota, Tessa Hadley, The Country Girls, The Heart in Winter, The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh, The Party, The Peepshow, The Spoiled Heart, The Unicorn Woman, The Women Behind the Door, Toni Morrison, Trinidad, True Crime, Under Cover of Darkness, Valerie Martin, Ways of Sunlight, Western, Windrush, Witchcraft, World War II

Marilyn Monroe reads Walt Whitman (Photo by John Florea)

For me, 2024 was a nebulous year when literary favourites returned but the best novels came from unexpected quarters. It was perhaps a stronger year for non-fiction, particularly when exploring the lives of creative women. Continue reading →

2023: A Year in Books

31 Sunday Dec 2023

Posted by marina72 in Books, Fiction, History, Non-Fiction

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A Northern Wind, A Year in Books, Alba de Céspedes, Andy Warhol, Brigitte Reimann, Call and Response, Cold Nights of Childhood, David Kynaston, Emma Cline, Forbidden Notebook, George Orwell, Germany, Gothataone Moeng, Italy, Jean Stafford, Joaquina Ballard Howles, Julia, Kate Grenville, Last House Before the Mountain, Lauren Groff, Leïla Slimani, Megan Nolan, Monika Helfer, Nicole Flattery, No More Giants, Nothing Special, Ordinary Human Failings, Poland, Restless Dolly Maunder, Sandra Newman, Seventy Times Seven, Short Stories, Siblings, Susanna Moore, Tezer Özlü, The Fraud, The Guest, The Lost Wife, The Mountain Lion, The Peasants, The Vaster Wilds, True Crime, Turkey, Watch Us Dance, William Harrison Ainsworth, Władysław Reymont, Zadie Smith

Set in her beloved West London, Zadie Smith’s The Fraud focuses on two forgotten figures: William Harrison Ainsworth, once a bestselling author – and a doorway into literary celebrity, Victorian-style; and Andrew Bogle, a formerly enslaved Jamaican and chief witness in the trial of the Tichborne Claimant. Caught in the whirl of notoriety, their fates are tracked by a free-thinking widow whose acidic commentary tests the bounds of white liberalism. Continue reading →

2022: A Year in Books

28 Wednesday Dec 2022

Posted by marina72 in Books, Fiction, Film, History, Marilyn Monroe, Non-Fiction, Politics, Witchcraft

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A Year in Books, Asian American, Big Red, Daniel Wiles, Dawn, Four Treasures of the Sky, Ireland, Jenny Tinghui Zhang, Jerome Charyn, Jill Dawson, Josephine Johnson, Kate Atkinson, Kate Meyrick, Leïla Slimani, Louise Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Maureen Freely, Mercia's Take, Michelle Morgan, Now in November, Ocean State, Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Roaring Twenties, Sevgi Soysal, Shrines of Gaiety, Stewart O'Nan, The Bewitching, The Country of Others, Trespasses, Turkey, When Marilyn Met the Queen, Witches of Warboys

I read Kate Atkinson’s first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, back in the late 1990s; and finally returned to her this year with Shrines of Gaiety, a Roaring Twenties romp loosely inspired by the rackety life of London’s ‘Queen of Nightclubs,’ Kate Meyrick. I was pleased to note that Atkinson’s dry wit remains intact. Continue reading →

2021: A Year in Books

24 Friday Dec 2021

Posted by marina72 in Books, Fiction, Non-Fiction

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A Year in Books, A.K. Blakemore, Agnes of Little Neon, Ailsa McFarlane, All I Could Never Be, Amanda Smyth, Anzia Yezierska, Attia Hosain, Bette Howland, Claire Keegan, Claire Luchette, Claudia Hernandez, David Bushman, Eve Babitz, Fortune, Gayl Jones, Glenn Stout, Hazel Drew, Highway Blue, In the Shadow of the Yali, Joan Didion, Julia Laite, Laura Palmer, Lilian Pizzichini, Mariella Novotny, Mark T. Givens, Monique Roffey, Murder at Teal's Pond, Nadifa Mohamed, Nervous Conditions, Palmares, Post-Colonial Writers, Profumo Affair, Slash and Burn, Small Things Like These, Suat Derviş, Sunlight On a Broken Column, The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey, The Fortune Men, The Manningtree Witches, The Mermaid of Black Conch, The Novotny Papers, Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid, Trinidad, True Crime, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Turkey, Twin Peaks, W-3, Zimbabwe

Among all the great new writing and reissues I’ve found this year, it’s clear that the world of books, like film, is becoming ever more diverse and we are all richer for it. After a long absence, Gayl Jones returned with the monumental Palmares, following a woman’s epic journey from slavery to an embattled free settlement and beyond. Set in 17th century Brazil, this story contains multitudes, offering an extraordinary meditation on the cost of freedom. Continue reading →

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