Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake’s inclusion in the Booker longlist should come as no surprise, given Hilary Mantel’s successes with English historical fiction and recent popular interest in the Anglo-Saxon period. JRR Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf was published earlier this summer. Yet, The Wake is neither a translation of Old English nor a conventional historical novel. Read More
“We are our stories. We tell them to stay alive or keep alive those who only live now in the telling.” Sequestered in an attic room in her ramshackle family home in County Clare, Ireland, separated from the outside world by a debilitating medical condition, ‘plain Ruth Swain’ has only the constant rain and a Read More
Ali Smith’s sixth novel, How to Be Both is, to put it simply, extraordinary. It is written in two parts – two Part Ones, that is – which overlap and intertwine. One part brings to life Francescho Del Cossa, the real-life Italian Renaissance artist known for the frescoes of Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, Italy. The Read More
“They plait together too tightly for Peter’s ear to make out everything that happens inside the five-way weave. The sound surrounds him […] a small but crucial part of everywhere” In true epic style, and with breathtaking ambition, Orfeo, opens in media res, the death of avant- garde composer Peter Els’ dog alerting neighbours to Read More
What is a novel for? What can the novel do, if it indeed “does” anything at all? George Eliot once wrote that great art surprised “even the trivial and the selfish” into consciousness of others, thereby enhancing our human capacity for empathy and morality. Georg Lukacs, the Marxist literary theorist, thought the novel’s “social totality” Read More
April in Paris is a warm, funny two-hander starring Shobna Gulati and Joe McGann as Bet and Al, a working-class couple from Hull who, despite barely being able to tolerate each other, win a romantic break to the city of love. Playing on the well-worn comedy theme of “Brits abroad”, the play is nevertheless also Read More
Karen Joy Fowler’s seventh novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, is a gripping read which breaks the mould of the traditional family narrative. It is a story like no other about sibling love and rivalry, raising fascinating questions about what makes us human, about animal rights, and the nature-nurture balance. The novel centres on Read More
“Imagine carrying a glass, full to the brim, around for thirty-six weeks without spilling a drop. Caution, care, a contrived and fragile serenity.” This is Douglas Petersen’s description of the second pregnancy of his wife Connie. Having endured the heart-breaking loss of a daughter first time around, it is easy to see how this phrase Read More
Pedro Serrano is an exquisite poet, and this is a collection that sings with virtuosic touches – Serrano’s verse itself, the work of the translator and the scope of the Arc Visible Poets series, which profiles both poet and translator. Parallel text editions are such a pleasure, even if one does not read the original Read More
Siri Hustvedt’s latest novel, The Blazing World, unspools itself messily in the mind of the reader. A tangle of testimonies, it purports to be an academic’s attempt to reconstruct the life of ‘Harriet Burden’, a minor New York artist and widow of Felix Lord, a wealthy art dealer. Lord and Burden – therein lies the Read More