A country is an amalgamation of dreams and nightmares: a torrent of conflicting visions that bash and crash against each other. They drive the country through triumph and disaster. They push its people together whilst systematically pulling them apart, but I don’t have to tell you this. It is most likely that you are witnessing
I must confess that at the midpoint of Nicole Krauss’ novel Forest Dark I found myself rather lost – i was scrabbling around in the dense bracken of words that echoed on and on, drifting between the endless themes and symmetries and metafictions that lay before me. Perhaps that is a little bit of an
Well, that’s a title and a half, and I do wonder, just a little bit, just how many people it would appeal to. Myself, you had me at shark, or drunk, for that matter – I mean, sometimes, when I’m fed up of the world of people, I look up footage of big, bad
How quickly the present becomes the past, or rather, how quickly things date: reading Guest by SJ Bradley brings forth some chuckles when remembering MySpace and password-activated internet time in your local library. (Do you remember MySpace, by the way? Do you remember you could add a tiled background of a puppy or your favourite
Every home has its secrets. Every tired old shell of a building has seen its fair share of drama and disaster. Some people believe ghosts haunt buildings – sitting around in their old abodes lost and forlorn for eternity. Some more literary minded people see the ghostly in buildings – the continued popularity of psychogeographic
I knew this was a book for which I would struggle to wait for the paperback edition to emerge; ever since its cryptic title started doing the rounds on Twitter I found myself sizing up the relative expenses I had to cover that week and arguing with myself over whether I really wanted a hardback
It’s hard to be a good short story writer, let alone get these stories published. Seldom are publishers interested in a format that doesn’t get carried off to the beach on holiday or translate well onto the pages of the review section of the paper. The publishing world has its eyes firmly on the prize:
Few artists are identifiable on sight; most are known only by their art, with a few notable exceptions: Picasso for one, with his fierce dark eyes, is an artist one could name if presented with his picture at a pub quiz; and otherwise the only other likely answer you would get right would be Andy
How much does the identity of an author matter when considering a novel? Often the backgrounds or indiscretions of authors never much affect the way audiences consider a work. But in other cases it can’t help but get in the way. Knowing the sexuality of Oscar Wilde highlights the innuendos he tried to cloak from
The Hypnotist has quite a striking cover. Anyone sitting opposite you on the train will be faced with a menacing hooded figure with two black holes for eyes staring unforgivingly out at them. Considering the political climate in which we live, reading a book with the hood of a KKK member on the front can
