Book Review: The Shutter of Snow
"Coleman spent the last years of her life in the radical Catholic Worker community, and it is Marthe’s mingling of fervour and rebellion which gives this novel its special power…
Book Review: Through The Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping – Derek Jarman
"For those familiar with Jarman’s work as an artist, there will be lots within these pages simultaneously familiar and queer." - Alice Wikenden
Book Review: The End of Nightwork – Aidan Cottrell-Boyce
"The End of Nightwork is an ambitious and intriguing debut. Due to a mismatch in form and content, however, the reader who wishes to parse its varied parts will have…
Book Review: Perpetual Comedown – Declan Toohey
Declan Toohey’s debut novel Perpetual Comedown is an energetic tale about Darren Walton, a doctoral student at Trinity College.
Book Review: Instant Fires – Andrew Meehan
Andrew Meehan’s Instant Fires sets the tricky feelings and follies of new love against the heft of family history.
Book Review: The Ballycotton Job – Tom Mahon
In a tone reminiscent of a storyteller gathering people around a campfire, Tom Mahon ends the first chapter of The Ballycotton Job; ‘But we’re jumping ahead of ourselves. How did…
Book Review: Liberation Day – George Saunders
"George Saunders returns to the form of which he is considered, by many, its pre-eminent practitioner in English." - Diarmuid McGreal
Book Review: Well I Just Kind of Like It – Edited by Wendy Erskine
"Well I Just Kind of Like It, edited by Wendy Erskine, is a playful, evocative collection of essays, reflections, and conversations on art in the home and the home as…
Book Review: Getting Lost
Getting Lost is essentially the diary Ernaux kept while engaged in a protracted and intense love affair with a Soviet diplomat.
Book Review: The Story of Bungalow Bliss – Adrian Duncan
"Bungalow Bliss - and, for that matter, Little Republics - shows the Irish people’s expressed desire to choose the form and manner of their own habitation, a fact too often…
Book Review: Is Mother Dead – Vigdis Hjorth
The title of Is Mother Dead, Vigdis Hjorth’s new novel, is a clue to its elliptical and maddening contents. A question without question mark – without complaint, plea or pitch…
Book Review: Faith, Hope and Carnage – Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan
‘The thing that happened that changed everything was that Arthur died.’ - Nick Cave in Faith, Hope and Carnage, an illuminating collection, reviewed here by Luke Warde.
Book Review: The English Understand Wool – Helen DeWitt
Frequently referred to as a ‘genius’, DeWitt is really a master of her craft. She has this in common with the weavers, tailors, and musicians worthy of the patronage of…
Book Review: A Little Unsteadily Into Light – Edited by Jan Carson and Jane Lugea
"If told as creatively, carefully and candidly as they are here, dementia stories can foster real awareness and understanding. Even as their characters lose the words with which to tell…
Book Review: All Down Darkness Wide – Sean Hewitt
"All Down Darkness Wide is a haunted book... It’s a remarkable meditation on how, sometimes, the way back to ourselves takes the form of telling the story of our own…
Book Review: Life Ceremony – Sayaka Murata
"Life Ceremony is a worthy teaser and, like Murata’s meals, queasily moreish." - Eve Hawksworth
Book Review: Yoga – Emmanuel Carrère
"If we have abandoned hope that Carrère will bring nirvana in sight, we are more than duly compensated for the time spent in his company." - Diarmuid McGreal
Book Review: This Train is For – Bernie McGill
“McGill’s deft handling of the way one’s past shadows the mundane offers some of the strongest moments of this collection.” - Alice Wickenden