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Recent Reading: Bakker, Souza Leão, Salter, Byers, Roth, Bennett, Antrim,...
What with one thing and another I haven’t been able to write about as many of the books I’ve been reading as I would have liked: so, by way of a corrective, I thought I’d talk about a few of the books...
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Book Notes: Dracula – Bram Stoker
Classics are a bugger to write about. One can either be refractorily contrarian or fawn and fall in line with the rest of the admiring hordes. That Dracula is accorded ‘classic’ status in the/a...
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Book Notes: The Europeans – Henry James
There is no croquet in The Europeans. A couple of weeks after finishing Henry James’ early novel The Europeans (1878) my overriding impression is of a deft, lighthearted, ironic, and Austenish work....
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‘Pock, smash’ The Embassy of Cambodia – Zadie Smith
Who would expect the Embassy of Cambodia? Nobody. Nobody could have expected it, or be expecting it. It’s a surprise, to us all. The Embassy of Cambodia! Zadie Smith returns to North West London –...
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Folio Prize Repost: Tenth of December by George Saunders
On Monday 10th March George Saunders won the inaugural Folio Prize for Tenth of December. Announcing the winner, Chair of the Judges Lavinia Greenlaw, said: “George Saunders’s stories are both artful...
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Paperback review: ‘that strange echoing fear’ How to be a Good Wife – Emma...
The distant mountains rise higher and darker, surrounding us: shadowed blue-green masses capped with white snow. On the surface Emma Chapman’s debut novel is a cool, controlled, and compact account of...
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‘…part of an ancient procession’ The Buried Giant – Kazuo Ishiguro
“You would have searched a long time for the sort of winding lane or tranquil meadow for which England later became celebrated.” The first sentence is as good a place to start as any for a reflection...
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The Ecliptic – Benjamin Wood
I think a man spends his whole lifetime painting one picture or working on one piece of sculpture. The question of stopping is really a decision of moral considerations. To what extent are you...
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The Last Pilot – Benjamin Johncock
The blanched beans steamed thin trails that coiled up from a pan in the sink. She watched them twist slowly, the desert flat and wild and wide out from the window behind. For a moment, the steam...
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The Fishermen – Chigozie Obioma
We were fishermen: My brothers and I became fishermen in January of 1996 after our father moved out of Akure, a town in the west of Nigeria, where we had lived together all our lives. A complex...
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