I was a big fan of Flynn Berry’s “Under the Harrow,” so I was delighted to score an ARC of her newest book, “A Double Life.” The novel is loosely based on the real life mystery of Lord Lucan, a British peer who disappeared after being suspected of the brutal murder of his children’s nanny and the assault of his wife during an ongoing custody dispute. To this day, it is unclear if he committed suicide or escaped England with the help of well-placed friends. He has never been found. Once banished from the literary canon, this new release of her only novel includes both her prose and poetry that offer astute observations of Russian society. Christian Science Monitor A Double Life is an appealing novel, offering a colorful, penetrating portrait of Moscow's high society in those times, especially the lives of the wives and women in it. M. A. Orthofer, The Complete Review A Double Life has plenty to say about how the marriage market deprived young noblewomen of outward agency and constrained their inner lives. . . . Heldt’s translation beautifully conveys the prose narrator’s astringent tone as well as the emotional intensity of the dreamworld’s poetry. Katharine Hodgson, Times Literary Supplement Heylin, like an unfortunate number of folks who write about Dylan, is a pompous, arrogant ass. He spends way too much time putting down other biographers. He seems to think we might care about what others got wrong but he has surely gotten right. Damn, man just get it right, and don’t mention Scaduto, Spitz, or Shelton. He also spends way too much space on Dylan’s random drivel in the form of his bad stream of conscious writing that became Tarantula and liner notes to 60s albums and in the incoherent interviews he gave on the tours in ‘65 and ‘66. Isobel appears to be a reasonable journalist but is on a downward spiral after some of her own life choices have not worked out well. She drinks and takes drugs to dull the pain of a previous mistake.

A Double Life by Charlotte Philby | Waterstones

I read Philby's first novel earlier this year and rated it four stars but said, "Knowing there are two more related books is a game-changer for me; this could well be a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ after all, as the one thing that made me unsure about it is answered by its having to perform “set up” duties for the next two books."

It was domestic violence. There was nothing uncommon about it, nothing mysterious. A woman is murdered by her partner two times every week in this country. Eight a month, more than a hundred a year. No one would have cared about my father, no one would know his name, if he hadn’t had money Dylan’s determination to succeed was relentless. He was a poser. A user. A dissembler. Adept at reinventing himself.

A Double Life by Charlotte Philby | Waterstones A Double Life by Charlotte Philby | Waterstones

Just started this book. I read an earlier book by this author and I am reminded of his superior, snotty tone. I suppose that his research is solid. But his snark and insults toward other books about Dylan are off-putting. He seems to think he alone is the Dylan expert. Claire is a hardworking doctor leading a simple, quiet life in London. She is also the daughter of the most notorious murder suspect in the country, though no one knows it. Ten weeks. It was four separate trips that total ten weeks. One trip was four and a half weeks. That was the longest. And I worked nine to five. That’s a fair bit of time. I did a lot of work on Volume Two, but the Covid thing shut that down. I still need to go through a lot of the Eighties session tapes. But he’s masterful on Dylan’s Christianity, the three-album period where this agnostic Jew who built a career on subtlety transformed himself into a one-dimensional fire ’n’ brimstone proselytiser for whom nothing was nuanced.I have to admit I had struggle somewhat with this book. It never quite came into focus for me until the final 10%.