Fiona Sturges Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Fiona Sturges

Last book review of the year: I wrote about Gavin McCrea's remarkable Cells: Memories for my Mother, in which the Irish novelist confronts the trauma of his past. https://t.co/QSHo8AYssG

Fiona Sturges

In today's @GuardianBooks, I reviewed Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries, written at the height of his fame and which reveal a funny, anxious, loyal and fitfully irritable man who almost single-handedly keeps The Ivy in business. https://t.co/qRPJv67eou

Fiona Sturges

The writing is spare and conversational, and reveals O’Connor as self-deprecating, pragmatic and a sharp observer... The final chapters, are episodic. But they remain, like the rest of her book, full of heart, humour and remarkable generosity.

Fiona Sturges

@sunshinepie I like cheesy. Along those lines, I really enjoyed the Minnie Driver memoir and Hannah Gadsby's Ten Steps to Nanette

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Fiona Sturges

I reviewed Anne Theroux's memoir of her final year of marriage The Year of the End, which is vivid and wise, and reveals much about living for yourself, rather than partners & children, especially in mid-life. https://inews.co.uk/culture/books/the-year-of-the-end-by-anne-theroux-review-hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-writers-ex-wife-1093566

Fiona Sturges

Good Girls... is her clear-eyed, sometimes upsetting but also bleakly funny account of this most slippery illness and what it feels like from the inside... there is no underestimating the value of a former sufferer able to articulate the thought processes behind self-starvation.

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Fiona Sturges

For @GuardianBooks, I reviewed Matthew Perry's memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, which is fascinating, saddening and, on occasion, utterly maddening. https://t.co/ISEvrHQqGc

Fiona Sturges

And, from the weekend, my review of the atmospheric The Paper Lantern, written & read by Will Burns. Set during lockdown, it follows the narrator on country walks during which he reflects on class, nature, history and the proliferation of men called Pete. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jul/01/the-paper-lantern-by-will-burns-audiobook-review

Fiona Sturges

My piece in today's @GuardianBooks on Michaela Coel's Misfits: A Personal Manifesto, in which the actor, screenwriter and all-round goddess offers an outsider perspective on a "faulty" television industry. https://t.co/QUsVm0lPi7

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Fiona Sturges

And for more audio goodness, here's my review of Nick Cave & Seán O'Hagan's Faith, Hope and Carnage, which finds Cave at his most charismatic and sage-like as he reflects on love, grief and creativity. https://t.co/zx32cvNsZd