Broadly speaking books are either discussed in terms of literary technique or subject matter - and this week's reviews fell predominantly into the former category. Interesting sentence formations and strange narrative structures were what excited our reviewers most.
The modernist classic Mrs Dalloway was revisited by Nickvirk, who welcomed the vivid and exciting writing. In her depiction of the human psyche and her critique of society and human interaction, Nickvirk notes that Woolf "pushes the boundaries of language, manipulating it to express the confused and erratic mind states of her characters." He adds that whilst today novels seem to have a "well planned plot with numerous twists and turns", in Mrs Dalloway "little happens". However, "what does happen is extraordinary and as a consequence the novel reverberates in the reader's mind long after they have finished reading."
Likewise, arivathsan considers Paul Harding's Tinkers to be "a brilliant novel, a piece of work that is likely to stick to the reader's memory for a long time." Chronicling the life of George Washington Crosby, an elderly man dying of cancer, through a series of disjointed, non-linear memories and hallucinations, Harding has created "a narration where the reader is left floating amidst the events and hallucinations".
AnnSkea, however, is disappointed by Jeanette Winterson's The Daylight Gate, arguing that "this is not her usual and inventive style". She feels that Winterson has been constricted by writing a book specifically for Hammer's horror series.
Based on the 1612 Lancashire witch trials, the novella fictionalizes the lives of the 12 witches and two men who were charged with murder and burned. AnnSkea concedes that Winterson's "short, abrupt sentences" successfully depict the witches and their "sordid lives", but hopes she will soon return to her usual style.
As ever, if we've mentioned your review in this article, please get in touch at claire.armitstead@guardian.co.uk and we'll send you a treat from the cupboards. Thanks for all your reviews.
