Last autumn, I asked Kei Miller for the names of contemporary Jamaican writers he thought I ought to read. The first name on his lips was Marlon James. I bought The Book of Night Women and A Brief History of Seven Killings, but as is the way of many good intentions, both titles overwintered unread Read More
Sanjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways could not have been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize at any better a moment than in the current political climate. Sahota’s political novel outlines the lives of three Indian migrant workers and Narinder, an Indian-British woman fighting her own personal battle between morals and abiding by the Read More
At a time when dystopian futures are a young adult novel’s game, Anna Smaill’s The Chimes rises from the ashes of teen love triangles and marketable trilogies as an original take on what has recently become an oversaturated genre. Edging more towards the book burning likeness of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Smaill secures an older demographic Read More
This complex novel, longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, is set in Ireland and various global locations. It tracks the progress, spanning three decades, of a family of four siblings, and their relationship with their mother Rosaleen. Enright won the Man Booker in 2007 with The Gathering, a novel described by one reviewer as Read More
A Little Life seems to be the favourite to win the 2015 Booker Prize. But before allowing it to be celebrated as the great gay American novel everyone’s been waiting for (as some have), the following observations may be relevant.. Jude, abandoned as a newborn, grows up in care and is serially sexually abused by Read More
Hanif Kureishi, a man who counts not only fiction, but also screen and play writing amongst his repertoire, here turns his hand to personal reportage. A Theft reads as a confessional essay of sorts. Kureishi tells us of his own experience of having his savings stolen by his newly employed accountant, Jeff Chandler. Chandler appears Read More
Jeanette Winterson’s latest novel, The Gap of Time, is the first “cover version” in Hogarth Shakespeare’s series where writers including Margaret Atwood, Howard Jacobson and Anne Tyler re-tell Shakespeare’s plays to mark, in 2016, the 400th anniversary of his death. Winterson has The Winter’s Tale and, given its focus on abandonment, adoption and forgiveness, it’s Read More
I penned this on the day Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader. In keeping with so many former Labour luminaries, this was a result campaigned against by Alan Johnson. Despite their political differences, Johnson and Corbyn share similar histories. Born within a year of each other, neither went to university. Both were schooled in politics Read More
Byssus – strong, tenaciously anchoring; the mussel’s beard, all delicate multiple fibres, with the capacity to be woven into highly desirable cloth. Jen Hadfield’s title for her first collection since the Eliot-winning Nigh-No-Place is a near-perfect metaphor for her attachment to her adopted Shetland, and for that land’s own bedrock hold. Byssus challenges with its Read More
I know you your face like a pool of leaves your long hands that way you have of speaking in many quiet, wayward tongues. Grass, rivers, vole-fur – when you fall you fall from grace into more grace and if the sun gets too close if its light blinds you hide from us, in the Read More