Sunday, February 23, 2025

Books

The Secret History Characters as Oxford Tropes

Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History is set in an exclusive college in Vermont but can be read as a satire of Oxford and its students. It invites us to question how little differentiates us from the elitist American universities.

Review: The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe

There are some writers whose line of literary descent is so clear as to...

BookTok: The Last Page of the Publishing Industry?

The #booktok stands that have become fixtures of bookshops across the country inspire intense...

Defiance: Racial Injustice, Police Brutality, A Sister’s Fight for the Truth by Janet Alder

At Oxford’s Wesley Memorial Church, Janet Alder offered a harrowing and unflinching account of resilience in the face of systemic injustice.

Philosophy in the Bookshop – Nigel Warburton in Conversation with Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf talks of book blunder and her ties to Oxford.

An Artificial Low

Reviewing Ottessa Moshfegh's 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation' (Jonathan Cape, 2018)

Menial Heroics

Reviewing Sayaka Murata's 'Convenience Store Woman' (Granta, 2019)

Reclaiming the Moment

A review of Lavinia Greenlaw's 'The Built Moment' (Faber and Faber, 2019)

The Funny/Not Funny Exercise

A review of David Sedaris' 'Calypso' (Little, Brown, 2018)

Troy Story Revisited

Reviewing Pat Barker’s ‘The Silence of the Girls’ (Penguin, 2018).

Going Wilde in America

“Audiences deserted his lectures, Harvard students mocked his outfits, and his failures left him drunk and dejected." Reviewing Michele Mendelssohn's 'Making Oscar Wilde'.

The New Bridget Jones?

Reviewing ‘Queenie’ by Candice Carty-Williams (Trapeze, 2019).

An Old War in a New Light

Reviewing ‘Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy’ by Max Hastings (Harper, 2018).

In Search of a Poet

Exploring the history and the hype behind the role of the Oxford Professor of Poetry

‘In Search of Equillibrium’

A review of Theresa Lola’s debut poetry collection (Nine Arches Press, 2019).

The Power of Telling Tales in Ali Smith’s ‘Spring’

'This third instalment in Smith’s quartet is perhaps the best yet; a novel for our times that asks all the right questions of the current climate, but also of itself. '

The ‘happily ever after’ we seek only exists in fiction

Reading stories full of delusions allows us to escape from the modern world

The Intricacies of Married Life

Exploring the themes of illict love, friendship and bereavement in Tessa Hadley’s 'Late in the Day'.

Thinking Through The Flesh

A review of Lidia Yuknavitch's new memoir, The Chronology of Water.

The Consolation of ‘Constellations’

A review of Sinéad Gleeson's new memoir.

‘If We Were Villains’: Caught in long shadow of ‘The Secret History’

Does M.L Rio's debut novel prioritise style over substance?

Reflective Awakenings

  The Victorian period was one defined by immense social change - especially in regards to women’s position in society. Throughout the century, increasing debate...

The Magic of Madeline Miller’s ‘Circe’

An exploration of the way Madeline Miller finds beauty in sadness.

Hartnell’s ‘Bodies’: Hugely readable

A review of Medieval Bodies by Jack Hartnell (Wellcome Collection, 2019, 352 pages)

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