Book Review: Nervous States – William Davies
A siren call, redirecting our focus to the deeper, tectonic underpinnings of our culture.
Book Review – Night Train: New & Selected Stories by Thom Jones
Jones writes with an exactitude that could only be rooted in experience.
Book Review: Welcome Home: A Memoir… – Lucia Berlin
Rich with the language and lifestyles of mid-twentieth century US bohemia, Welcome Home is warmly welcomed, indeed.
Book Review: A Brilliant Void – Edited by Jack Fennell
In a time where the lines between science fiction and real life can seem blurry, exploring what our literary ancestors envisaged in the future can be a fascinating venture
Book Review: Heroic Failure – Fintan O’Toole
A tragicomic reflection on the English idealism that culminated in Brexit, equally it serves as a work which dissects the New Right’s bewilderingly successful lunge for power.
Book Review: Lies – Doireann Ní Ghríofa
A book that reveals, again and again, the shifting, enigmatic power of language.
Book Review: Freshwater – Akwaeke Emezi
A tale that blends Igbo spirituality with contemporary realities.
Book Review: Evening in Paradise – Lucia Berlin
This collection – this series of ‘locations’, the sentences and stories within which Berlin felt rooted – is utterly sublime.
Book Review: Notes from the Fog – Ben Marcus
The worlds in Marcus’ stories are weird reflections of our own, where science soars and people forget to touch one another.
Book Review: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead – Olga Tokarczuk
Tokarczuk’s narrative unfolds around the disappearance of her two dogs – ‘her girls’ – and the mysterious deaths of members of a local hunting club.
Book Review: Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss
A characteristically intelligent account of an impossibly complicated relationship.
Book Review: Washington Black – Esi Edugyan
Recently longlisted for the Booker, Esi Edugyan’s novel Washington Black is a wholly original take on the complex subject of slavery.
Book Review: Sweet Home – Wendy Erskine
It seems fitting that these stories each smoothly reveal narrative enfilades of memories, passions and desires. A home run.
Book Review: Normal People – Sally Rooney
Rooney brings her readers incredibly, almost suffocatingly, close to her protagonists, revealing who they are and what they think.
Book Review: Immigrant, Montana – Amitava Kumar
Kumar’s novel is a rich, allusive exploration of immigration and selfhood.
Book Review: New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future – James Bridle
New Dark Age is essential ballast for embarking into uncharted waters.
Book Review: Certain American States – Catherine Lacey
Lacey’s storytelling is so wonderfully delineated that it is easy to become wholly absorbed, to feel completely present amid the characters’ anxieties and actions.
Book Review: Convenience Store Woman – Sayaka Murata
In Keiko’s words, “you play the part of the fictitious creature called ‘an ordinary person’ that everyone has in them.”