Absolutely not surprised this book won the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction. This was recommended to me and is one of my favourite reads to date, which is a big (but worthy) shout.

This explores the love between Achilles and Patroclus, and is incredibly powerful, moving, and hard to put down. You can almost feel the excitement, pain and anticipation throughout.

It took ten years to write while the author perfected the narrative voice - worth it!

#TBR: This is next on my list and I'm so excited to read it. @AlexMay and I had been talking this morning about literature and I talked about the reasons why I love poetry. Later on, when he came back from town, he gave me these lovely gifts! The Forward Book of Poetry 2017 full of the best work of the last year, and a beautiful notebook and pen for me to write my own. He's very sweet. He gets 10/10.

#contemporary
#poetry
#ForwardPrize

"And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die."

I read this a years ago and fell in love with the rhythm and pure emotion. You can feel every word and the structure is beautiful. He wrote this while exiled after his release from Reading Gaol and describes the despair, sadness and horror he witnessed.

"They're always looking forward to going places they're just coming from, or regretting doing things they haven't yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye."

#MartinAmis
#Novel
#ReverseChronology
#Shortlisted #BookerPrize
#WorldWar2 #Holocaust