Cold Sea Stories is the latest fictional work from veteran Polish writer Paweł Huelle, and was translated into English from the original Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. As its title suggests, the book is a collection of thematically linked short stories set in the Baltic region: the “cold sea” of the title. Huelle draws upon historical Read More
It has always been difficult to give an adequate definition of the Modernist movement in literature that does justice to its complexities. What we can be certain of is Modernism’s complete departure from tradition. In Umbrella, which could be described as Will Self’s most experimental piece of work to date, the reader is without a Read More
Swimming Home, Deborah Levy’s first novel for fifteen years, is a slim volume which has the outward appearance of a novella rather than a novel. This, coupled with what seems to be a somewhat conventional storyline of marital infidelity in a holiday villa in the south of France, makes Levy’s book, at first sight, an Read More
Bashabi Fraser
In Bring up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel’s much anticipated follow-up to the multi-award winning Wolf Hall (2009), we explore one of the most unsettling episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn. As the author points out in a note at the end of the book, however, this new novel is not about the Read More
Diana McCaulay’s new novel, Huracan, tells the story of her Jamaican homeland through three separate narratives, two of them historical and the third set – more or less – in the present day. The primary narrative is that of Leigh McCaulay, who returns to modern day Jamaica after the death of her mother. Alienated as Read More
Families and familial relations are where feelings such as love, desire, anger, hurt, anguish, betrayal, guilt, frustration not infrequently reach a tipping point. The bonds that bind parents, children, siblings are so overdetermined that it often becomes impossible to think and see clearly, and even more so when their circumstances are infused with tragedy. Family Read More
Given that it boasts a chic, Glenlivet-supping heroine ostensibly named after one of the architects of the post-war British welfare state, it is not surprising that Sara Sheridan’s Brighton Belle is difficult to pin down in any satisfactory way. Sheridan’s new period mystery, the first of the Mirabelle Bevan series, demonstrates that the boundaries between Read More