Book reviews from the Asylum

The Asylum review blog is a one-man-show from John Self in Belfast. He reviews about ten novels a month with great perception and always from a base of sound good taste. I’ve been following it now for several months, picking up tips on what to read. He’s not trying to show off by lashing out reviews bang on launch date: the novels will often be a couple of years old or classics he has missed out on.

I see his most recent post has 48 responses. It’s good to see he’s getting the attention he deserves.
Forget the Sunday paper reviews. They are generally written by fellow writers, and no-one in a small country like Ireland is going to be harsh on friends of friends.
Pay a visit to Asylum.

Here he reflects on the dangers of trying to have an instant definitive opinion on new works:

The danger with books which really give us something unfamiliar is that we will mistake the lack of familiarity for fundamental flaws in the structure or writing. The converse of this, however, is to give too much credit where a book does break the banks of traditional literary fiction, and miss the flaws altogether.