book reviews and features
Edward St Aubyn: Double Blind review - constructing 'cognition literature'![]()
If it weren’t for the warning on the blurb, the first chapter of Double Blind would have you wondering whether you’d ordered something from the... Read more... |
Agustín Fernández Mallo: The Things We've Seen review - degrees of separation![]()
Trilogies (it is noted, in the term’s Wikipedia entry) “are common in speculative fiction”. They are found in... Read more... |
Extract from Sauntering: Writers Walk Europe, introduced and edited by Duncan Minshull![]()
Wandering, ambling, sauntering. The last, least heard of the three, captures a sense of leisurely aimlessness: a jolly meander unbound by destination, admitting none of the qualms of... Read more... |
Nina-Sophia Miralles: Glossy - debut author takes on Vogue and the Condé Nasties![]()
“Bringing out a luxury magazine in a blitzkrieg is rather like dressing for dinner in the jungle,” wrote Audrey Withers, editor of British Vogue, in December... Read more... |
Brenda Navarro: Empty Houses review - the pains and pressures of motherhood![]()
The horror novelist Sarah Langan recently compared motherhood to being treated like a game of Operation. “The point of the game is to correct us... Read more... |
Kazuo Ishiguro: Klara and the Sun review - what makes us human?![]()
Unsettling, unremitting and psychologically stark, Klara and the Sun has all the hallmarks of a... Read more... |
Katherine Angel: Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again review – the complexities of consent![]()
Katherine Angel borrows the title of her latest book, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, from an essay by Foucault. The phrase parodies the supposed... Read more... |
Frances Larson: Undreamed Shores review - journeys without maps![]()
Beatrice Blackwood had lived in a clifftop village between surf and jungle on Bougainville Island, part of the Solomon archipelago in the South Pacific. She hunted, fished and grew crops with... Read more... |
Joseph Andras: Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us review - injustice and tenderness in the Algerian War![]()
Joseph Andras wastes no time. “Not a proud and forthright rain, no. A stingy rain. Mean. Playing dirty.” This is how his debut novel kicks off, and it’s a fitting start for his retelling of the... Read more... |
Karla Suárez: Havana Year Zero review - maths, phones and mysteries in down-at-heel Cuba![]()
Havana, 1993. Far away, the fall of the Soviet empire has suddenly stripped Fidel Castro’s Cuba of subsidy and... Read more... |
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