Not So Different After All

The Book: Room by Emma Donoghue

The Review: "Room is a book to read in one sitting. When it's over you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lingers for days."

The Reviewer: Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife (and someone who should know better)

The Verdict: After finishing Room, you will indeed look up (of that I am certain), however I imagine it will merely be to question what went wrong with this promising little book. It's not that's it's bad, it's just nowhere near as important as it thinks it is.

Vernon 'Oh God make it stop' Little

The Book: Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

The Review: "Reading this book made me think of how the English language was in Shakespeare's day, enormously free and inventive and very idiomatic and full of poetry as well"

The Reviewer: John Carey, Chair of the Booker Judges

The verdict: Ah, yes, John Carey must be thinking of that original version of Hamlet where every third word was "fucken" and Laertes blew smoke up Horatio's arsehole.