The place to find past issues of the Your Next Book newsletter
– my take on some of the outstanding writing on my bookshelf

I finished the book last night and then had to try to get to sleep. With the momentum of the story gone. I felt as if I’d been turned inside out and all the soft inner bits were facing the world. I felt I’d been brought face to face with the dreadful side of humanity, with what we allow to happen and seem powerless to stop happening.

​​Sometimes you just want a light read, well enough written with a setting that’s interesting and a story that moves nicely from A to B. You are happy to have stock characters and some nice descriptions. Along comes A Necessary Death,

I love statues. I love them because they put beauty and dignity in public spaces, because they become playgrounds for children, because they tell stories and also because most people don’t care about the stories. They live just their lives around the statues that provide their spaces with height and focus.