Reviews

I love finding out about readers’ favourite books! In just 150 words please tell Tusitala and the ‘World’ about one of your favourite books and share your enthusiasm with others. Just send Tusitala around 150 words as to why you love a particular book. It doesn’t matter whether it is fiction or non-fiction. Once the review has been accepted it will be posted on the Friends of Tusitala Review Section and readers can get the chance to enjoy your recommendation. Many Thanks!

Essential Desert Island Reads

Books do change your life and have certainly transformed my existence! So, if I were contemplating a few months on an island (not unlike the original ‘Tusitala’ Robert Louis Stevenson) then these books would have to come with me. They are very powerful friends of mine.

• Private English Tutor/Tuition Manchester, Bolton, Bury: Shena Mackay's The Orchard on Fire: Descriptive Writing at its best!
• Jane Eyre's first encounter with Rochester:Chapter 12- A short Analysis on the irony of retrospect!
• GCSE descriptive writing: Susan Hill's short Masterclass of an opening!
• Dickens' Great Expectations, Chapter 8: Why does Pip fall in love?
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens- A Revisited Review and analyis.
• Charles Dickens' Night Walks: Analysis and thoughts.
• Jude The Obscure Book One Chapter IV: Hardy's own bleak house of despair?
• Tusi-bites: Henry V and the rule of three by Janet Lewison
• Charles Dickens' Masterclass on place in A Tale of Two Cities.
• Tusi-bites with Janet Lewison: The Speckled Band of Conan Doyle.
• The enigma of identity: Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.
• Rose Tremain's Trespass: Secret hatreds in rural France.
• Dickens' The Signalman: the ambiguity of signs! by Alison Ridyard.
• Reading The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean by David Almond.
• Waking up with the Master and Margarita-Bulgakov's helter skelter tapestry of fantasy and pantomine.
• D H Lawrence's Odour of Chrysanthemums by Cath Corri!
• Cath Corri:Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights
• Cath Corri: Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient
• Michael Morpurgo: A Elephant in the garden.
• Daphne Du Maurier's 'The Old man' with Alison Ridyard
• Daphne du Maurier's The Birds by Alison Ridyard
• Daphne Du Maurier and The Birds!
• English Entrance Examinations: The Creative Writing essay with a little inspiration from Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book.
• Daphne Du Maurier in overalls: Kiss me again, stranger!
• The Old Man by Daphne Du Maurier: A twist with a twist!
• Susan Hill's story: The Boy who taught the beekeeper to read.
• Does Jane Eyre ever escape the 'red room' or is she metaphorically incarcerated there for the entire novel?
• Sarah Waters: The Night Watch
• English Tuition: Why reading matters!
• Katherine Mansfield- The Journal and the Collected Stories.
• The Bins, the bins!
• Secret heart by David Almond -Review Guardian
• Isabel Allende - The House of the Spirits
• Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
• Toni Morrison - Beloved
• Sarah Waters - Fingersmith
• James Ellroy - The Black Dahlia
• Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
• Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse
• Amy Bloom - A Blind Man call tell how much I love you
• Charles Dickens - Bleak House
• Katherine Mansfield - Collected Stories
• Carol Ann Duffy - Mean Time
• DHLawrence - The Virgin and the Gypsy
• Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist
• Jeanette Winterson - The Passion
• Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
• Jed Rubenfeld - The Interpretation of Murder
• Thomas Hardy - Far from the Madding Crowd
• William Trevor - Cheating at Canasta
• Charlotte Mendelson - When we were bad
• John Connolly - The Reapers
• Stieg Larsson - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Charles Dickens - Best Ghost Stories
• David Almond - Kit's Wilderness
• Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book
• John Connolly - The Lovers
• M J Hyland - This is how
• Flann O'Brien - At Swim Two Birds
• Michael Frayn - Spies
• Truman Capote - In Cold Blood
• Pierre Clostermann - The Big Show
• James Lee Burke - A Stained White Radiance
• Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe's Regiment
• Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
• Daphne Du Maurier - Rebecca
• William Shakespeare - As You Like It
• Charles Dickens - The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Chronicle of a Death Foretold
• Gregory Maguire - Wicked
• R. J. Ellory - A Quiet belief In Angels
• Harlan Coben - The Woods
• Minette Walters - The Chameleon's Shadow
• Gordon Ramsay - Playing with Fire
• Natsuo Kirino - Out
• Clare Grogan - Tallulah and the Teenstars
• Neil Gaiman - American Gods
• Val McDermid - A Darker Domain
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Best of Sherlock Holmes
• Ian Rankin - Exit Music
• Val McDermid - The Distant Echo
• Steven Galloway - The Cellist of Sarajevo
• William Trevor - After Rain
• Seamus Heaney - Human Chain
• Angela Macmilllan - A Little Aloud
• Susan Hill - The Woman in Black
• Robert M Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• EASEFUL