“Sit anywhere you want, but try stick to the front to keep the intimate feel,” were the words said to me as I collected my tickets. I thought nothing too much of it – not expecting anything out of the ordinary. Instead, in true Rep fashion, I was greeted by an absolutely beautiful stage. A Read More
Ahmet Altan is a murderer. At least, he is in the eyes of the unnamed, enigmatic narrator who, having recently taken a life, spends his own final hours musing about the relationships between God, an author, and his characters. Part existentialist essay and part murder mystery, Endgame is a story that slowly but surely draws Read More
Lindsay Parnell’s debut novel Dogwood is not for the faint hearted. The novel begins with the main protagonist, Harper, writing a letter to her younger brother Job telling him about the execution of Tara Hackett, a murderer whom she met in prison. The explicit descriptions of violence and sheer horror presented serve as a warning. Read More
Jackie Copleton’s first novel is ambitious in its themes and in the spread of history it encompasses: A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding is set mainly in Nagasaki across the years before, during and after the dropping of the atomic bomb. The plot revolves around Amaterasu, a mother and grandmother, whose desperate search to find her Read More
Those April Fevers is the perfect fit for anyone looking for a collection of diverse poems that is far from conventional poetry associated with continuous meter and schematic rhymes. Mary O’Donnell produces exquisite, elegant and colourful poems, open to any field or subject. This expansiveness is also represented in her approach to genres: not only Read More
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight: Time is on the wing but he doesn’t seem to like it as he paces up and down the aisle worried about flying perhaps or deep thrombosis until a stewardess makes him take his seat again. My Read More
Ron Silliman is an American poet with a distinctive voice and an extensive publishing history in poetry. Taken as a whole, however, his is a relatively meagre canon; he views his work as essentially consisting of several long poems spread over a large number of collections stemming back to the 1970s but which should be Read More
Petina Gappah’s The Book of Memory is a startlingly vivid and rich narrative recounting the story of Zimbabwean death row inmate Memory, or Mnemosyne. Through meticulously interweaving and patching a gamut of memories together to form a story, Gappah’s debut novel simultaneously evokes feelings of intrigue, pathos, wonder and hope. The early isolation of Memory informs Read More
This collection of Cornish poet Jack Clemo’s work consolidates poetry from all his published volumes in the first major poetry publication since his death over twenty years ago. These Selected Poems, edited by Luke Thompson, are designed to reinstate Clemo as a celebrated national poet. With this resurgence of interest in Clemo, it is important Read More
Sometimes there is irony in a book’s appearance and format. This ‘Little Red Book’ is not a collection of quotes by Chairman Mao, but a novel that echoes the great American jazz-age classic, The Great Gatsby. The (anti?) hero in this case is Roman Gorsky, a billionaire Russian oligarch who has settled in London, during Read More