Keogh > Recent Status Updates

‘Harry Rosetree was very jolly that day, even when the sweat trickled down his delicatessen skin’…..this is such a serious book, but the brutal descriptions are sometimes hilarious

Other authors must read Patrick White and feel like Salieri

Staggering book so far . Nothing on the covers indicates this, but it has a section about the Holocaust in it, which is sensitive, thought-provoking and horrifying .

I love this. It seems much more accessible from the start than the others of his novels I’ve read .

Mention of Johnny Halliday on this page

Set in Haiti, which is interesting, with all the Graham Greene ingredients - the antihero; the shady and corrupt regime; the messy foreign mistress, and Catholicism .

I’ve put it down ! Hopefully not forever

I wanted to read a big book to finish 2025, and I’ll probably still be reading this at the end of 2026

The way the author is exploring conventions of the time through someone with a disability is really interesting, and contrasts with books like Heidi and What Katy Did and their wheelchair-bound heroines. He offers what was to me a completely new perspective on unrequited love, and does seem to be subverting some romantic tropes. Brilliant storytelling .

Old-fashioned storytelling. For some reason, my mind has decided that the characters look like the people on the old Quality Street tins.

I’ve wanted to read this since seeing the film. I read at the time that it was very different to the film. It’s the same in its preoccupation with logistics; to demonstrate the horrors through showing the ‘issues’ of processing. As with the film, the sounds play a large part, and the contrast of the family life.

This book is building up. Just read a chapter where one character told another that we’re all Father Christmas for each other, hiding the truth so as not to spoil things. She then goes on to talk about losing herself, and the story seems to imply that she found herself through some very bad things happening to her. The ‘retelling’ structure of it works. It’s interesting.