It seems to me that Philip Roth sits squarely within a tradition of great story-telling. I can imagine being in a quiet room with him and then he leans over and says “Let me tell you about this guy I know…” His work is conversational, relaxed; it is unfussy, unpretentious. Yet none of this stops… Read More “Everyman”
I have, in the not too distant past, been less than complimentary about Ernest Hemingway (To Have and Have Not). Undaunted, I decided to try “Men Without Women”, and I confess to be really pleased to have done so. The stories are lean and enigmatic. The medium seems to suit Hemingway’s somewhat ‘punchy’ style, and… Read More “Men Without Women”
It’s my own fault. The cover was plain enough: ‘Winner of the Walter Scott Prize’; ‘Historical fiction at its best’. And I never read historical fiction. So what was I doing with a copy of Benjamin Myers’ “The Gallows Pole”? I mean, really? And early doors my initial fears appeared to be justified. Some the… Read More “The Gallows Pole”
In her poem ‘Dark Looks’, Riley says “So, take me or leave me … or don’t flick and skim to the foot of the page and then get up to go -” – which is precisely what I did do. After all, most of the time I had pretty much no idea what was going… Read More “Selected Poems” – Denise Riley
Helen Mort’s “Black Car Burning” is, quite simply, a remarkable book. Rarely do you come across a novel that is so rooted in place. The work of Joyce, Forster’s “A Passage to India”… Sheffield permeates “Black Car Burning”. It is a character in it’s own right – quite literally. And it seeps into every page.… Read More “Black Car Burning”
OK. Let’s get a couple of things clear up front… This post isn’t about speed-dating Actually I’ve never had any experience of speed-dating, so if you hear anything to the contrary they are just vile rumours So, speed-dating. The ‘topic’ – or at least the title of the topic – comes from a recent post… Read More Speed-dating
There can be few writers more generally inaccessible than e.e.cummings. By breaking so many conventions – both in the language and structure of poetry – perhaps the primary thing cummings’ achieved was to release the traditional shackles and taboos which may have been constraining poetry in the first part of the twentieth century. You could… Read More “e.e.cummings: selected poems 1923-1958”
Forgive me, but to my mind Robert Frost is no great time-traveller, his verse is stylistically too anchored in the past. I find it amazing that some of this vast collection was actually written in the Sixties, especially when you think about what had been going on in poetry (and literature in general) since the… Read More “The Collected Poems: Robert Frost”
There is a tremendous degree of variety in Zadie Smith’s short story collection, “Grand Union”. Variations in style, theme, tempo. There is also (for me at least) considerable variation in terms of what one might euphemistically – and dangerously! – bracket as ‘accessibility’. Some of the writing is breathtaking; some less so. A number of… Read More “Grand Union”
If you’re the kind of person who flicks through a few pages of a book before you decide to buy it, then you might be put off by Max Porter’s “Lanny”. The way one of the character’s contributions are printed is, shall we say, a little ‘esoteric’; the font is variable, and the words bend… Read More “Lanny”
Simply stunning. Having read “The Underground Railroad”, I confess to being a little reticent about deciding to read Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys”. I wasn’t sure that it would be quite ‘me’. Perhaps I was nervous that – as a white, middle class Brit – the book wouldn’t resonate with me, that I’d fail to… Read More “The Nickel Boys”
one day it will be too late and all those things I should have said or wanted to say will be lost because I will not be here to say them nor remember they needed to be said in the first place
Yesterday evening I, along with at least a couple of hundred others, sat in on the Zoom launch of the Autumn 2020 edition of The Poetry Society’s quarterly tome, the Poetry Review. For some time now there has been a consistent refrain among members of the poetry groups to which I belong that an unreasonable… Read More So maybe poetry isn’t about the language any more…
As a member of Goodreads.com – and therefore a “Goodreads author” – I have indulged in their ‘Giveaway’ scheme twice now. The premise is simple: you fund 100 copies of your e-book and Goodreads runs a lottery on your behalf where members can apply for a copy which, if they are selected at random, they… Read More Why as an author you shouldn’t use a Goodreads’ ‘Giveaway’…
I am currently working my way through two-hundred-and-seven submissions for an anthology of poetry and prose I plan to publish early in 2021. It’s an interesting experience. As a first stage I’ve taken to dividing pieces into three groups: Shortlist – those that are clearly good and likely to make the final cut; Longlist –… Read More Searching for good writing…
I confess to have been prompted to this mini self-assessment by Andrea Badgley’s post Writing More Means Doomscrolling Less, and as a follow-up to my own Missing Work Already? It’s not the kind of thing I normally do; I’m not a natural “look at me” kind of person – though I am belatedly realising that… Read More “So how’s the not working / writing more thing going…?”
I really liked Benjamin Myers’ “The Offing”. It’s a gentle, inoffensive coming-of-age tale; romantic with a small ‘r’. Like most things, “The Offing” is far from perfect: perhaps it tries a little too hard early on before it gets into the swing of itself; and most sixteen-year-olds simply wouldn’t have the nouse to do some… Read More “The Offing”
I daresay a case could be made to argue that it is only when a novelist is writing short stories that you get a true measure of their abilities: the need to be economical but not too sparse; the creation of a plot that is coherent but not over-blown; the establishing of character without having… Read More “The Shell Collector”
Sometimes you can do nothing about it. Unbidden a phrase or a sentence will pop into your head and not let go. It could be something new, or the need to change something old – but let’s hope not borrowed!! Today gifted me one of those mornings. Reeling a little from a writers’ group the… Read More The 4 a.m. alarm call…
Today is the first ‘new Monday’; the first whole week where I can decide what I do with my time, how much I write. Staggeringly it is a month since I wrote The Daunting Prospect of Reinvention – and what’s more bizarre is that it feels as if I have been footloose and fancy-free for more… Read More Missing work already..?
