The life of books on the web

A great thing about the web is the way books can go on getting reviews long after publication. To my delight yesterday, four and a half years after Balancing on the Edge of the World came out, Bookersatz published a review by Claire Marriott.  She calls it 'an intense collection of stories' and finds the 'characterisations ... particularly vivid, ranging from comic to tragic but always retaining their believability'. I'm always immensely interested to find which are people's favourite stories in the collection - it's amazing how much that differs! - and this is what Claire says:

'My favourite pieces are Daniel Smith Disappears Off the Face of the Earth which contrasts one life-altering moment in the life of a teenage boy with “all the times and places in the history of the world” and Power, the haunting story of a young girl listening to her parent’s relationship fall apart.'

And of course people go on discussing books on the web on a more casual level. I was thrilled when a couple of days ago poet Steve Waling urged his Facebook friends to read The Birth Machine and called it 'really rather brilliant, deep dark and moving.' And once again it struck me how a book that was first published only for a women's market is now, on its republication by Salt, finding such favour with male readers.