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Channel: The 1p Book Review – The Dabbler
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1p Review: A Month in the Country by J L Carr

In this 1p Book Review, Nige enjoys visiting “a world of strenuous hymn-singing in chapel and front parlour, huge teas and hellfire sermons”… I’m not sure how long ago I first read J.L. Carr’s A Month...

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1p Book Review: Zen Flesh, Zen Bones collected by Paul Reps

Spiritual enlightenment and the wisdom of the Zen masters – yours for only a penny!… Keen Dabbler readers may recall my fondness for the joke about the man who has an orange instead of a head. In fact...

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1p Book Review: The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G.B. Edwards

Nige enjoys a flawed but enthralling masterpiece by an ‘almost wilfully obscure’ author… It’s not often I come across a novel that I can truly say is like no other I’ve ever read – but The Book of...

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1p Book Review: The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

Nige recommends a ‘jolly kind of nightmare’… I don’t know why I had never got round to reading G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday – or, come to that, The Napoleon of Notting Hill.  I’ve now...

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1p Book Review: Futility by William Gerhardie

Nige is dazzled by the debut of a now largely forgotten author… William Gerhardie’s Futility, published in 1922 (and available for 1p from Amazon), was a dazzling debut novel. Here’s how it begins:...

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1p Book Review – I, An Actor by Nicholas Craig

Nige recommends the ‘autobiography’ of one of our greatest thespians… ‘Acting is the supreme test of physical and mental courage. It is like climbing Everest single-handed in the dark. It is like...

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1p Book Review – The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley

Laugh-out-loud funny but undeniably rum, Nige discovers a true original… Does anyone read Rose Macaulay these days? She seems to be one of those writers who figure large in their own time – their...

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1p Book Review: Charles Portis The Dog of the South

Nige discovers ‘a true giant among comic characters’… Having enjoyed and admired Masters of Atlantis so much, I’ve been reading another of Charles Portis’s novels – The Dog Of The South (available for...

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1p Book Review: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

ZMKC enjoys a modern classic, available for a penny on Amazon…. I think I may be the last person in the world not to have read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Indeed, it is possible that the only...

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1p Book Review: Alice Munro – Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship,...

Nige marvels at the ‘practically perfect’ short stories of Canadian author Alice Munro… It took me a long time to finally get round to reading Alice Munro – perhaps I was put off by the sheer volume...

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1p Book Review: Murphy by Samuel Beckett

Nige revisits Beckett’s first novel – ‘very Irish, very clever’, and prefiguring the great works that came after.. His troubles had begun early. To go back no farther than the vagitus. It had not been...

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1p Book Review: Jane Gardam

Today we suggest you seek out the works of the representative of a long-lost tribe – many of them available for a mere penny on the web… Despite being prolific and successful, (twice winner of the...

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1p Book Review: A Book of Secrets by Michael Holroyd

Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf The more Nige reads of Violet Trefusis, Vita Sackville West and Virginia Woolf in this excellent group biography, the more appalling they seem… The biography...

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1p Book Review: The Wife of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis

There are countless overlooked books that deserve greater recognition – and many of them can be snapped up for a penny online. Here Nige recommends a classic novella… Janet Loxley Lewis was the wife...

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1p Book Review: The Missing Will / A Dubious Codicil by Michael Wharton

Michael ‘Peter Simple’ Wharton’s The Missing Will and A Dubious Codicil can be bought for a penny in a single volume, but, as Brit writes, it’s very much an autobiography of two halves… The Missing...

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1p Book Review: Wait for Me! by Deborah Devonshire

ZMKC recommends the often hilarious memoirs of Deborah, Duchess of Deveonshire and youngest of the notorious Mitford sisters… Wait for Me!, the autobiography of Deborah Devonshire, is worth at least...

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1p Book Review: One Day by David Nicholls

ZMKC is captivated by a romantic comedy which is also a ‘remorseless satire of the eighties and nineties’… The action of One Day (available for 1p on Amazon) takes place over twenty years and follows...

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1p Book Review: A Lost Lady by Willa Cather

Nige recommends a lesser known novel by My Antonia author Willa Cather… A Lost Lady by Willa Cather [available for a penny from Amazon] is an apparently slight novel of some 160 pages that achieves...

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1p Book Review: Bad Land by Jonathan Raban

Nige recommends Jonathan Raban’s account of the praire homesteaders… Mixing history with reportage, travelogue, reconstruction and personal narrative, Jonathan Raban’s wonderful book Bad Land...

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1p Book Review: How to Be an Alien by George Mikes

Nige digs out a nearly-forgotten foreigner’s eye view of the British… The Hungarian-born British writer George Mikes (15 February 1912 – 30 August 1987) is best known (if he is remembered at all) for...

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