![\"Destination](\"https:\/\/wpcluster.dctdigital.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2023\/09\/destinationfabulous-2uvhphwwe.jpg\")
<\/a>Destination Fabulous<\/a><\/em> by Anna Murphy<\/h3>\nAnna is Fashion Editor of The Times<\/em>, but this is not a book only about what to wear. It is about the joy of ageing and accepting its challenges, and, in fact, being excited about it.<\/p>\n Wonderfully realistic, it is also exhilarating and gives huge encouragement to anyone over fifty that this is just a beginning. I am almost sixty-five and everything Anna has written here resonated with me. And, of course, there is some guidance on how to look! She exhorts us to be bold and wear bright colours \u2013 I have already shopped for something other than my usual autumnal black.<\/p>\n This is a trilogy, but each one is brief, and it\u2019s impossible not to read them all (maybe with a gap between each one). I have become a huge fan of Cusk. She writes with such daunting honesty and frankness (in the first person) and describes ordinary people and their lives in such a way that they become extraordinary.<\/p>\n An apparently simple encounter becomes the inspiration for many chapters. Like all the best writers, Anne Tyler and Elizabeth Strout for example, the style is deceptively simple, but the words lived with me long afterwards.<\/p>\n This is Norris\u2019s new novel, and he is hugely gifted.<\/p>\n With a light touch he writes about life and loss, what influences us, and making decisions, all in a very flowing style.<\/p>\n Although there is plenty of pathos here, it\u2019s a hopeful book. I think we need optimism both in our lives and in our reading \u2013 and I think this is especially true as the days get shorter.<\/p>\n Everyone needs a good thriller in autumn \u2013 and the best writer in the genre is Stephen King. He never lets me down.<\/p>\n Billy Summers<\/em> is about a hired killer. A likeable hired killer. At the beginning I found it hard to believe that this character could be in anyway sympathetic, but soon I was completely engaged by him and persuaded that in some way he would be doing the right thing by killing another man. This demonstrates that King must be among the world\u2019s best storytellers because he can manipulate his readers, as well as his characters.<\/p>\n When Billy Summers faces extreme jeopardy himself, the heart literally palpitates \u2013 and without giving away what happens at the end, it left me in floods of tears. King took me to a whole other environment, a totally alien world.<\/p>\n And then into the reassuring company of Ian McEwan, who is one of the best writers in the English language, someone who constructs sentences so perfectly there is never one word too many or too few. Each of his novels has taken me into new territories and faced me with new ideas.<\/p>\n Lessons<\/em> reads convincingly like a believable biography, but I daren\u2019t imagine it is. It begins with the protagonist as a fourteen-year-old boy who is seduced by his piano teacher. This becomes a relationship, an obsession, a secret, that will have an effect on the rest of his life.<\/p>\n It sounds like an uncomfortable start, but the novel goes on with many others musings on life and mortality \u2013 and with more than 500 pages it\u2019s perfect for many long evenings of reading.<\/p>\n My autumn reading will be a mix of comfort and challenge with the occasional diversion into something chilling. I tend to alternate between non-fiction and fiction, from more gentle reading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32709"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32712,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32709\/revisions\/32712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.victoriahislop.co.uk\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/wpcluster.dctdigital.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2023\/09\/outlinex-11je9ox6p-255x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Outline, Transit and Kudos<\/a><\/em> by Rachel Cusk<\/h3>\n
\n![\"Undercurrent](\"https:\/\/wpcluster.dctdigital.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2023\/09\/undercurrentx-36m4tqshz-191x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Undercurrent<\/a><\/em> by Barney Norris<\/h3>\n
\n![\"Billy](\"https:\/\/wpcluster.dctdigital.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2023\/09\/billysummers-1omwcyjq5-191x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Billy Summers<\/a><\/em> by Stephen King<\/h3>\n
\n![\"Lessons](\"https:\/\/wpcluster.dctdigital.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2023\/09\/lessons-1ggvxhg2a-192x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Lessons<\/a><\/em> by Ian McEwan<\/h3>\n<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"