Hi and welcome to A Life in Fiction – a growing collection of book reviews.

My name is Peter Bainbridge, and I am your host. This is my personal blog for book reviews. I realised I was spending more and more of my time reading and so decided to start writing my thoughts down to recommend to friends and family later. Eventually I decided to start this site to share my thoughts with a wider range of people and hopefully make this a resource for people to find their next book to read, and even recommend books to me and other readers on the site.

So from its humble beginnings as a way to share my opinion with a close ring of friends, I have become more ambitious and want to open this to the world to share the books I love to read and inspire people to take a chance on something a little different. So if you share a love for good fiction and high quality writing, then you can check this site for recommendations.

I hope also that you will share your own thoughts on the books I write about. Let me know what you think of any of the books I have reviewed, what your favourite parts are or which bits disappointed you, or share your own ratings if you disagree with mine. I want this to be an interactive place to share thoughts and to debate about books.

Me and My Taste

Having done a degree in English Literature I can be quite picky about what I choose to read – usually classic novels or contemporary authors with exceptional and unique voices in fiction. I try not to read trashy novels or things that just happen to be popular at the time, but I will also try to give any author or genre a fair shot, regardless of popularity or general perceptions of a genre.

I try to vary my reading as much as possible, and enjoy a wide variety of genres covering everything from historical fiction to sci fi, including Gothic horror, fantasy, contemporary “literary” fiction such as David Mitchell and even children’s fiction like Chris Priestley’s ghost story collections and Coraline by Neil Gaiman.

I like books that make you think about the subject matter like Sirius and The Inheritors

My favourite authors all tend to have their own unique writing styles and tend to be very playful with language in a striking way that can’t easily be replicated by another, like David Mitchell and William Golding, whose ideas and way of writing tend to be a step ahead of the competition.

At the moment I am adding 1-3 reviews per day to the site, covering books I’ve read in the last year or so as well as my favourite novels, classics and great examples of genre and exceptional writing.

If this is your first visit, then here are some of my favourite books – read their full reviews below and please leave a comment with your thoughts – whether you agree or not:

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
A brilliant and complex novel that shows Mitchell’s vast imagination and incredible skill with language across 6 different genres and time periods

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht
A stunning debut novel mixing fantasy and realism together to create a compelling tale

The Inheritors by William Golding
Golding’s lesser known second novel arguably takes the basic concepts behind Lord of the Flies even further with a brilliant portrayal of Neanderthals and early humans with imaginatively descriptive language

Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts
A great sci-fi novel by a masterful author in the genre, full of dry, dark humour with a great idea behind it

The City & The City by China Miéville
Another brilliant sci-fi novel based on a great concept, though it resembles hard-boiled crime fiction as much as science fiction

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
A tale of self-deception set in post-war Japan, showcasing Ishiguro’s skill with both his narrator’s perspective and of those around him, while never breaking his first person perspective