Books

Seasonal reads: On childhood hobbies, growing up, and guilt

Reconnecting with reading is something many people tend to do on a summer holiday, and statistics suggest it is one of the only times the majority of  adults read...
Books Elizabeth Gammaidoni -

Diverse voices: ‘Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah’ by Miljenko Jergović 

‘When he created Earth and these lands upon it, when he divided people into...
Books Abigail Riley -

YA Thrills: Escapism and disguise

An issue that has been encountered by authors since the dawn of time, perhaps one that feels too obvious to even state, is that some readers will not enjoy their books.
Books Elizabeth Gammaidoni -

The death of the male novelist or the birth of the feminist?

The death of the male novelist, as a concept exaggerated by the dramaticisms of its name, fails to stand up under investigation.
Books Elizabeth Gammaidoni -
Latest

‘and all manner of things shall be well’

Jack Glynne-Jones explores how T.S. Eliot provides solace in periods of stress

Review: Diary of a Murderer and Other Stories by Kim Young-Ha

‘It’s been twenty-five years since I last murdered someone, or has it been twenty-six?’ A serial killer suffering from Alzheimer’s attempts to protect his daughter...

Review: Conversations with Friends

At one point in Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, the protagonist, Frances, tells her best friend and former girlfriend, Bobbi: ‘If I could talk like you...

David Copperfield: strikingly modern?

We often speak of a ‘writer for our times’, the ‘voice of a generation’ – there is this need to define our age, to...

Review: That Reminds Me (2019)

Fragmentary, authentic and poetic – Derek Owusu’s latest publication, That Reminds Me, succeeds in its painfully honest exploration of a young Ghanaian boy’s journey into adulthood.  When...

Eco-Fiction

Last November, Waterstones named Greta Thunberg as their ‘author of the year’. Her collection of speeches, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, certainly...

The Modern Memoir

“I can’t believe that we’re on the fifth instalment of my autobiography. As usual with me, the three years since my last book, You Only...

Literary Blackface

When the largest book retailer in the United States, Barnes & Noble, launched their so-called Diverse Editions initiative in honour of Black History Month,...

Review: Caging Skies and Jojo Rabbit

When depicting the world and ideology of Nazi-Germany, the theme of childhood or the child-like figure is quite a well-used one. Key examples include...

Queer Theory

As we go into LGBT+ History Month, many figures throughout history - modern or not - are looked upon and celebrated, and rightly so....

Queer Victoriana: Sex in the City

In 1881, The Sins of the Cities of the Plain was published privately in 250 copies. It purports to be the memoirs of Jack Saul, a...

Review: ‘American Dirt’

There was high expectation placed in American Dirt, what with Oprah Winfrey evangelising on Apple TV and a flood of celebrity endorsements on Twitter and...

Violent Music – Acaster’s ‘Perfect Sound Whatever’

Perfect Sound Whatever is comedian James Acaster’s part-memoir, part-encyclopaedic recount of the records that made 2016 the Greatest Year for Music of All Time,...

The Challenge of Maintaining a Legacy

January 2020 has brought with it the deaths of both Christopher Tolkien, son of J. R. R. Tolkien, and Stephen Joyce, grandson of James Joyce. The...

The Enduring Legacy of Pippi Longstocking

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Pippi Longstocking’s arrival at Villa Villekulla. In her first appearance Astrid Lindgren’s eponymous heroine fascinates her neighbours,...

The Death of Jesus

The world of J. M. Coetzee’s Jesus novels – a trilogy which has accounted for most of the author’s output in the last decade – is not easy...

Review: ‘Howards End is on the Landing’

Oxford time does not have the rhythms of ordinary time. There are very few moments for extended, contemplative, peaceful reading, of the sort which...

Local libraries: do we still need them?

What is a library? Most of us would describe them as a place to study (or at least pretend to), or somewhere to find...

Review: ‘A Portable Paradise’

In a recent interview with the Guardian, the British-Trinidadian Roger Robinson conjectured that his poetry ‘came out of storytelling at the dinner table’. The...

Orwell: a deserving modern hero

George Orwell should be declared a modern hero. The Etonian rebel was an interesting character, for he voluntarily subjected himself to poverty for many...
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