Queer is the only way to accurately describe this novel. It is playful, bold, risqué, but ultimately, in my opinion, boring. The story takes off a few years after The Wizard of Oz ends; Dorothy has inexplicably and regretfully returned to Victorian USA from Oz and has been prostituting herself to raise funds to return Read More
Yanick Lahens’ The Colour of Dawn is a poignant, brief novel set over twenty-four hours in the Haitian capital of Port au Prince, and narrated by two very different sisters whilst they await news of their missing political activist brother. The novel revolves around the two narrators Joyeuse and Angelique, and their mother Venante, who Read More
Liam Murray Bell’s second novel, The Busker, takes as its hero Rab Dillon, a Glasgow boy whose guitar might – just might – hold the key to his future. Rab’s journey, from the first thrills of success as a newly-signed political singer to his lowest ebb as a Brighton bum is conceptually solid. Drawing on Read More
Although translated into English by America’s Scala House Press in 2004 under the title The Cartier Project, it is only now that Miha Mazzini’s Crumbs has been published in the UK. Its publication by Freight Books in February of this year is timely; as “a ribald, satirical Balkan classic about identity and independence in the Read More
“Quit fucking black cops or get booted from the Communist Party.” The opening line of Jonathan Lethem’s ninth novel delivers a stark warning of the somewhat indelicate prose that lies ahead. Dissident Gardens is a modern American epic that follows the people involved in the alternative political movements of the last century, from Communist cells Read More
A.L Kennedy has a well-deserved reputation as one of the best writers working in Britain today. In her latest collection, All the Rage, Kennedy turns her gaze toward the wretched aspects of love: the fault-lines where the erotic becomes violent, where love degrades into betrayal, and where the edges of language rise up, rendering her Read More
All the Beggars Riding, the third novel by Lucy Caldwell, demonstrates an impressive command of complex emotional narratives and a playfulness with the technicalities of truth and story-telling. Its predominant theme is that of families and their destructive secrets which echo down generations. It also asks if and how we might break free from the Read More
One of the more tiresome habits shared in recent years by publishers and reviewers alike has been the hailing of almost any new arrival in the thriller genre as “the new John le Carré”. Even ignoring the question of whether le Carré can really adequately be described merely as a thriller writer, the epithet is Read More
Nicola White saw off over 350 other authors to win the 2013 Dundee International Book Prize with her debut novel, In the Rosary Garden. Based upon a notorious case of infanticide in Ireland in the 1980s, and set predominantly in White’s home town of Dublin, the plot centres on Alison Hogan or Ali for short. Read More
Fans of White Teeth will find much to satisfy them in Zadie Smith’s latest work. Weaving together three narratives Smith once again proves her skill at describing a moment and a place in time, in all its inherent beauty and ugliness. Centred on London’s Kilburn area and the Caldwell estate, the story is told through Read More