Diana Hendry

Small but perfect: So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan reviewed

16 September 2023 9:00 am

The author once takes a big issue and, with her characteristic quiet brilliance, illuminates it in a small homely setting

The long journey from Lindisfarne: Cuddy, by Benjamin Myers, reviewed

18 March 2023 9:00 am

St Cuthbert’s body, rescued from the ‘devilish Danes’, is carried for hundreds of years to its eventual shrine in Durham cathedral

Three men on a pilgrimage: Haven, by Emma Donoghue, reviewed

13 August 2022 9:00 am

I used to envy Catholic novelists – Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, François Mauriac – as having that extra point of…

Memory test: The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan, reviewed

23 April 2022 9:00 am

On page 231 of The Candy House, a sequel – no, a ‘sibling’ says Jennifer Egan – to the Pulitzer…

Compassion and a gift for friendship are touchingly evident in Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days

11 December 2021 9:00 am

It has to be one of the most extraordinary stories of lockdown — how Tom Hanks’s assistant Sooki Raphael, undergoing…

Mothers and daughters: I Couldn’t Love You More, by Esther Freud, reviewed

12 June 2021 9:00 am

A new novel by Esther Freud — her ninth — raises the perennial but always fascinating question about the use…

Dublin double act: Love, by Roddy Doyle, reviewed

17 October 2020 9:00 am

Far be it from me to utter a word against the patron saint of Dublin pubs, Roddy Doyle. Granted he’s…

Unreliable memories: Laura Laura, by Richard Francis, reviewed

15 August 2020 9:00 am

Just imagine: you reach a certain age and you become your own unreliable narrator. Gerald Walker, the protagonist of Richard…

Violence and cross-dressing in post-bellum Tennessee: A Thousand Moons, by Sebastian Barry, reviewed

21 March 2020 9:00 am

It was perhaps a mistake to re-read Sebastian Barry’s award-winning Days Without End before its sequel, A Thousand Moons, since…

Does questioning women about their sex lives constitute harassment?

24 January 2020 10:00 pm

Alert to the combination of a controversial issue and a brilliant writer, Serpent’s Tail have bought This is a Pleasure,…

Lusting after Bathsheba: Lux, by Elizabeth Cook, reviewed

8 June 2019 9:00 am

The novel is a wonderfully commodious creature. One might wish they made trousers like it, for it can stretch or…

Too much American angst: the latest short stories reviewed

25 August 2018 9:00 am

In ‘A Prize for Every Player’ — one of 12 stories in Days of Awe, a new collection by A.M.…

Is City on Fire just a box set masquerading as a novel?

17 October 2015 8:00 am

Ninety pages into the juggernaut that is City on Fire, I begin to think that this is really a box…

My First Love

30 August 2014 9:00 am

I made the mistake of getting in touch with him twenty years after – invited him to stay. He was…

The Shock of the Fall is a worthy Costa Book of the Year

15 February 2014 9:00 am

About 30 pages in and unable to find my bearings, I flipped to the end of this novel — well,…