Andrew O’Hagan’s “Mayflies” is unrelenting. During the first half of the book where we see a group of Scottish lads on ‘the lash’ in Manchester, he immerses us in their over-the-top hedonistic experience of drink, drugs and music without giving us a chance to come up for air. Then, in the second half of the… Read More “Mayflies”
I’m currently reading Simon Armitage’s Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic and I came across this: each new poem never anything less than a written plea for the next. from “Émigré” This is, of course, spot on. For those of us blessed – or plagued (you choose!) – with the compulsion to write, there is always this… Read More A written plea for the next…
If you’re a parent and a driver, the chances are the title of this post will resonate. Remember those long journeys – and probably not-so-long ones – when the chant from the kids in the back at some stage invariably migrated to “Are we there yet?”… Journeys of this nature – from A to B,… Read More Are we there yet?
I have decided to cycle the length of the UK – Land’s End to John o’Groats – on my exercise bike. Over 1,500 km split across 57 ‘stages’. Okay, so there are no uphills – but there are no downhills either! It seemed like a good idea: keep fit, have a challenge to aim for,… Read More Sound body, sound mind..?
Bernadine Evaristo’s “Girl, Woman, Other” is – quite simply – a triumph. I have no idea why it has taken me so long to read it. Perhaps I was put-off by its 450 pages, or the blurb, or the cover – the last two of these suggesting that somehow it wasn’t going to be ‘my… Read More “Girl, Woman, Other”
Monday next week will be something of a landmark day. And for all sorts of reasons. Most importantly perhaps, it begins the university journey of one of my children: their first full week away from home. I am, of course, both proud and jealous! Simultaneously, our youngest has started on their journey into adulthood via… Read More Don’t fear dreams – worry about them coming true…
It seems lots of people are deserting WordPress for Substack, lured by the notion of creating ‘newsletters’ that people will pay to receive. That and knowing they’ll be rubbing virtual shoulders with famous names and literary goliaths – and the fact that Substack is currently ‘free’. So is it a good move? It’s tempting, of… Read More Substack: Nirvana or the Emperor’s New Clothes?
It was partly because I liked Richard Powers’ “The Overstory” so much that I tried as hard as I could to get through “Galatea 2.2” – but I simply couldn’t finish it, and gave up about a third of the way through. It has been a while since I last had to admit defeat like… Read More “Galatea 2.2”
It is easy to see why David Diop’s relentlessly dark “At Night All Blood Is Black” won the 2021 International Booker Prize. The novel is suitably dark and brooding, an examination of one man’s decline into madness as he and his French compatriots fight in the trenches of World War One. Alfa’s Senegalese roots permeates… Read More “At Night All Blood Is Black”
The Binding of the Sea would the tide never stop coming in inching ever higher as the months passed there were only two roads out each burdened with over-familiarity all novelty quagmire-sunk as if the peninsula had capitulated and the sea invaded the land going further afield they sought pubs in out-of-the-way locations explorers for… Read More The Binding of the Sea
I went for a run first thing this morning. Nothing too dramatic. A gentle jog to test out my aching left achilles’ tendon. Or is it the calf muscle? And I was reminded – inevitably – how my running used to be… My best ever time for 10k was a little over 46 minutes; I… Read More Holding on or letting go? The Worthwhile Life: 2
How do you know if you have lived a ‘worthwhile’ life? When you look back on how you have spent the time gifted you, how do you judge if it has been time ‘well-spent’, ‘worthy’, ‘good’, virtuous’, ‘positive’…? You pick the adjective because the supply is almost endless! Which ones you choose will depend on… Read More Has it been a worthwhile life..?
Elsewhere I have observed how – to my palette at least – some books have not aged well in terms of their writing style. In the case of Alain-Fournier’s “Le Grand Meaulnes” I find a novel that has not travelled well both in terms of style and plot. Indeed, I was most struck by how… Read More “Le Grand Meaulnes”
Having already read three novels by Colum McCann, perhaps one of the best compliments I can pay “Songdogs” is to say that it simply doesn’t read like a debut novel. It is inevitable that in many first novels Authors are finding their feet, only growing into themselves and establishing their voice and presence as they… Read More “Songdogs”
Like many thousands of other young people in the UK, today my son has received his A-level exam grades and had it confirmed that he is going off to the university of his choice. I am – of course – proud of him. Thinking back to my own time at university, the thing for which… Read More “Call me Ishmael….”
If you were to ask me what I like best about writing prose then the answer is simple: making people. There is nothing quite like that feeling of giving life to a previously non-existent character, of forming them, building their history, giving them emotions, ambitions, plans. For each and every one of them the potential… Read More Why I love making people…
“By no means a conventional crime story” – according to the blurb on my copy of Olga Tokarczuk’s “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”. Let’s face it, a conventional crime story is the last thing you’d expect to emerge from the slightly surreal worlds of the Nobel Prize winning Tokarczuk. And in… Read More “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”
If Max Porter’s “The Death of Francis Bacon” is intended to represent the ravings of a dying man, then job done. Tick. The danger – from a reader’s perspective, however – is that you’re not entirely sure exactly what’s going on. There is a balance to be struck, of course, a tightrope to be walked,… Read More “The Death of Francis Bacon”
There is an immediacy about childhood. We are impatient, fickle; we want today’s new thing, an ice cream, to go to the park. And we always want them now. For young children, tomorrow simply doesn’t exist. Then things change. School does that to us. It introduces us to “school days”, “weekends”, “holidays”; eventually it becomes… Read More Short-term, long-term, short-term; the Shifting Horizons of our lives
The final instalment of Ali Smith’s quartet, “Summer”, is lorded on the front cover of my copy as ‘a tour de force’ – and for once the publishers are not wrong. In many ways “Summer” is an extraordinary achievement: stylistically inventive, politically astute and opinionated, accomplished in the depiction of character and relationships… Yes, it… Read More “Summer”
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