Shell McConville's Blog
October 10, 2025
My furrowed-middlebrow-etc shelf
I have read 10 novels from Dean Street Press and I know I will carry on collecting them. (The 'etc' covers other similar novels.)
In a world of screaming, over-emotional, over-stated, uninformative headlines (in both the traditional and the alternative media) and when very small incidents are over-dramatized and regarded as news (making Everests out of the smallest molehills), the world of these novels is an oasis of sanity.
This is not a bad case of nostalgia because I was not even born when most of these books were written and even the later ones were written when I was a baby, a toddler or still at school.
There is often not a great deal of action but there are heroes, scoundrels, tyrants and the oppressed. The difference is that they are people we are likely to meet not larger-than-life characters. Their emotions are just as deep and their dilemmas just as difficult but the 'good' characters strive quietly to live a life of integrity and freedom. They don't whine about their circumstances they show stoicism and intelligence as they try to make their way in life. I appreciate them and respect them because they represent what is good and admirable in humanity.
In a world of screaming, over-emotional, over-stated, uninformative headlines (in both the traditional and the alternative media) and when very small incidents are over-dramatized and regarded as news (making Everests out of the smallest molehills), the world of these novels is an oasis of sanity.
This is not a bad case of nostalgia because I was not even born when most of these books were written and even the later ones were written when I was a baby, a toddler or still at school.
There is often not a great deal of action but there are heroes, scoundrels, tyrants and the oppressed. The difference is that they are people we are likely to meet not larger-than-life characters. Their emotions are just as deep and their dilemmas just as difficult but the 'good' characters strive quietly to live a life of integrity and freedom. They don't whine about their circumstances they show stoicism and intelligence as they try to make their way in life. I appreciate them and respect them because they represent what is good and admirable in humanity.
