Richard Powers’ “The Overstory” is a quite exceptional book on many levels. Engaging, principled, well-written, intelligent; the narrative weaves it way through its pages like the roots of a tree – especially in the final section where the tendrils mix and merge and knit. It’s obvious why it was shortlisted for the 2018 ‘Booker’, and… Read More “The Overstory”
Really looking forward to appearing on the panel of writers at this free event in Ripon Library on 14th March, being grilled about being a writer – and only having a minute to answer each question!
Zoë Skoulding’s “Footnotes to Water” is somewhat obsessed with its subject. Water flows through the poems, washing inexorably over you in wave after wave. Which is fine, though a little more variety – if only to better demonstrate the poet’s linguistic skill – might be nice. In many of the pieces I struggled with the… Read More “Footnotes to Water”
Later, after the fog had lifted, I discovered I had become invisible. It had tumbled down the hill like an afterthought forgotten by the morning, as if it had missed its alarm call and was trying to make up for lost time, scurrying across the lake to where I sat alone, accompanied only by the… Read More Anonymous – a short story
Compulsion abstracted from reality he painted consumed by a nameless passion accidentally acquainted no slave to fashion he claimed a lack of choice for rolling with the punches rarely on the verge of controlling unbidden instinctive hunches it’s not important what’s created he claimed his… Read More Compulsion – a poem
Obituary fettered by an obscured unnatural view he sought another as if a fresh vista might renew a weary perspective on his mother tongue the tricks he’d sleight-handed since the womb his genius for linguistic husbandry were devoted to a life beyond the tomb his embalming for posterity it was the one… Read More Obituary – a poem
On Being Thrown Over Would your love for me increase were I to die or would my barely-mourned decease erase me from your memory? Would your febrile eyes seek out a physical response, the fuel to weave a quilt of lies made posthumously cruel? Was I no more than ornament, a transient… Read More On Being Thrown Over – a poem
It was a little over two months ago I wrote the first version of the post below. Given the books I was working on were finally published today – Published Today! – the questions posed below become even more relevant. I’m heading into the bulk of 2020 without a firm plan. I have been through the… Read More The Perennial Question: What Next? (part 2)
I am delighted to announce three new books for 2020, the first two of these released today, 1st February 2020! The third is published in a week’s time. Liam is haunted by his age and the history it forces upon him. Yet he is also plagued by the need to make more – to generate… Read More Published Today!
Many years ago the comedian Billy Connolly produced a brilliant TV series, “Billy Connolly’s World Tour of Scotland”. Many of the stories in “Tale Tales and wee stories” are replays of some of the material from that series, and at its best the book takes you back to those shows; you can picture Billy delivering… Read More “Tale Tales and wee stories”
She speaks with a strange intonation, a peculiarly-located rise in her voice as if the person who taught her English had overlaid the rhythms and inflections of an entirely different language: French, or German, or Pig Latin. It also seems she has never acquainted herself with the full set of letters in the alphabet; some… Read More Park-and-Ride – a short story
I really don’t like not finishing reading a book once I’ve started, but sometimes I find that’s the only way to move on. Unfortunately Charlotte Ansell’s “Deluge” falls into that category. I’ve been dipping into it for many weeks now and am still only half-way through. It sits on a table by the sofa and… Read More “Deluge”
Some books don’t travel well through time. They are of an era, an age. Perhaps those that do – Austen or Conrad, for example – are signs of greatness, of ‘classic’ literature. What, then, might one say about a book that has not travelled well, that is stylistically convoluted and at times feels remarkably self-indulgent?… Read More “Murphy”
Sarah Perry can write. On the back cover of “After Me Comes The Flood” Sophie Hannah is quoted as saying “If she doesn’t win the Booker Prize one day, I’ll be amazed”. I’m inclined to agree. There are perhaps some characteristics shared between the protagonists of “After Me” and her other two novels “Melmoth” and… Read More “After Me Comes The Flood”
I really like Mary Jean Chan’s “Flèche” – even though, based on my track record of how I respond to a reasonably large proportion of modern verse, I shouldn’t… Why is that? Two main reasons, both normally bête noires. The first is the significant experimentation in form (especially how the pieces appear on the page)… Read More “Flèche”
I confess to being uncertain as to what kind of book Éric Vuillard’s “The Order of the Day” actually is… Although I found it on one of Waterstone’s fiction tables, it relates events leading up to the Austrian Anschluss of 1938 and thus the foothills of the Second World War, and does so with what… Read More “The Order of the Day”
My occasional penchant for modern Japanese ‘magic realism’ novels is something of a double-edged sword. Why do I say that? Having read virtually everything Haruki Murakami has read, I find the bar for such novels is set pretty high, so when something like Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s “Before the coffee gets cold” comes along, there is perhaps… Read More “Before the coffee gets cold”
The thing that struck me most about Jericho Brown’s “The Tradition” was more generic than specific. As I struggled to get beneath the words, to find some kind of rhythm that appealed to me, a language I could interpret, I realised how much reading poetry – unlike prose, you could argue – is dependant on… Read More “The Tradition”
It’s great when you choose to read a book from an author you have never previously encountered and end up wanting more. John Lanchester, whose novel “The Wall” found its way into my possession after a recent expedition to Waterstones, is such writer. Like Sarah Perry, Donna Tartt, John Ironmonger, Sebastian Barry and many recently… Read More “The Wall”
Although its geographical setting is very different, Sarah Perry’s excellent “Melmoth” tackles some themes similar to those in “The Essex Serpent”: the semi-isolation of an individual in community; guilt and sin; the threat of the unknown; how people manage – or not – their interaction with something intangible, ephemeral, threatening. The words you might see associated with the… Read More “Melmoth”
