Many years ago when I was studying at University, during holidays I used to work in a bookmakers. It was a wonderful experience for a young man learning about people and life. ‘Welshman’ is a short story based on those experiences, and whilst it is not a retelling of a specific event nor portraying real… Read More ‘Welshman’ – new podcast episode
If you’ve read my previous reviews – all the way back into 2018! – you’ll know that I loved Natasha Pulley’s “The Watchmaker of Filigree Street” and “The Bedlam Stacks”. Sadly I can’t say the same of “The Kingdoms”. The beginning of the book is something of a confused muddle. I know the main character… Read More “The Kingdoms”
Last week I had the great privilege of mentoring at another Writers’ Retreat. In addition to a couple of workshop sessions, at the core of my mentoring are 1-2-1 sessions with each of the attendees during which we discuss their current and future projects. Sometimes they arrived burdened with uncertainty over what to do next,… Read More Another great mentoring experience!
Jon McGregor is nothing if not inventive and challenging – and “Lean Fall Stand” is both of those things. Spoiler alert! The primary action of the novel (covered in the ‘Lean’ part of the story) concerns an ill-fated expedition in Antarctica. The rest of the novel – ‘Fall’ and ‘Stand’ – narrates the post-expedition experiences… Read More “Lean Fall Stand”
If you were looking for a collection of short stories with a somewhat dizzying array of themes, characters and styles, you could do a lot worse than take a look at Daniel Mason’s “A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth”. Thanks to the variety in the nine stories offered us, it is actually very… Read More “A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth”
The other day I read my short story “Park’n’Ride” at a local writing group. Someone whose opinion I respect described it as ‘brilliant’. It was – needless to say – a real boost! Of course it was also a demonstration of how subjective our appreciation of writing – or any art – is. “Park’n’Ride” has… Read More One little word…
I have just published two new episodes on my “Walking Thru’ Fire” podcast; both are short stories. “Downsizing” – sometimes short stories can surprise you, emerging not from specific ideas or experiences, but growing organically from seeds which you are later unable to identify or remember. “Downsizing” is one such story. It will be included… Read More Two New Podcast Episodes
I have just added readings of poems from my collection The Homelessness of a Child to my podcast “Walking Thru Fire”. You can find this episode – and many others! – on Buzzsprout, and it should find its way onto other podcast platforms – such as Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music etc. – in the next… Read More New Podcast Episode: “The Homelessness of a Child”
The stories in David Constantine’s “Tea at the Midland” are a little like stained glass windows: sometimes you see fully formed portals through which the sun shines, and on other occasions just a fragment or two of glass glinting in the sun. As a consequence – and as I may have said before – don’t… Read More “Tea at the Midland”
At the beginning of the UK’s first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, Hamish Wilson began writing a series of sonnets. With one a day for the first twenty-five days of the period, these poems eventually became “Lockdown Journal”. Many single Covid / lockdown poems written at the time seem to me to fail for two main… Read More “Lockdown Journal”
I was left strangely underwhelmed by Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Klara and the Sun”. It wasn’t the quality or style of Ishiguro’s writing (which to my mind has only failed to come up to scratch in “The Unconsoled”), nor in the inventiveness of the basic premise. I think I felt left down by the way the plot… Read More “Klara and the Sun”
I have just added readings of a few selected poems from my collection First-Time Visions of Earth from Space to my podcast “Walking Thru Fire”. You can find this episode – and many others! – on Buzzsprout, and it should find its way onto other podcast platforms – such as Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music etc.… Read More New Podcast Episode
Often the challenge with ‘portmanteau’ novels such as Robert Seethaler’s “The Field” is one of maintaining a cohesive narrative thread throughout the work in order to prevent it from fragmenting into discrete and inadequately connected portraits. The premise behind “The Field” – the deceased, all buried in the same graveyard in a small European town,… Read More “The Field”
It is difficult to like Jonathan Walker’s “The Angels of L19” – in the sense of the novel giving you a warm, comfortable, fuzzy feeling – but impossible not to admire it. Without doubt it is a real pressure-cooker of a book: intense, unrelenting, dark, ominous, ambiguous, challenging. Perhaps the latter most of all. Not… Read More “The Angels of L19”
You know those TV programmes that are naturally about 45 minutes long but which, in order to fit them into a schedule, are padded out to fill an hour? Well, Dale Bailey’s “In the Night Wood” struck me as a little bit like that: it would perhaps have benefitted from being a little shorter, losing… Read More “In the Night Wood”
I have just added a reading of the first chapter of my 2019 novel, At Maunston Quay, to my podcast “Walking Thru Fire”. You can find the episode immediately on Buzzsprout, and it should find its way onto other podcast platforms – such as Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music etc. – in the next 24 hours… Read More New “Walking Thru Fire” Podcast Episode
David Constantine’s collection of short stories, “The Dressing-Up Box”, is, in many ways, unlike any other volume of short stories I have ever come across. Many of the narratives are slightly surreal, other-worldly, and in some cases the stories fail to follow the beginning-middle-end convention – not that there’s any problem in that at all… Read More “The Dressing-Up Box”
I have now published six episodes to my Walking Thru’ Fire podcast. Four of these comprise selected readings from some of my poetry collections: Walking Thru Fire (podcast introduction) Collected Poems, 1979-2016 Human Archaeology Punctuations from History There are also two extracts from my non-fiction work Shrapnel from a Writing Life. I plan to add… Read More “Walking Thru’ Fire” Podcast update
Well, I couldn’t not read it… After all, a poetry book winning the Costa Book of the Year..! When did a poet last win?! (ans. ’99 & ’96 Seamus Heaney, ’98 & ’97 Ted Hughes) I needed to know what all the fuss was about. Well, there are some great poems in Hannah Lowe’s “The… Read More “The Kids”
I have decided I need to reconsider my relationship to the ‘Open Mic’ i.e. to adjust not only my expectations of what I should expect to get from such events, but what I should contribute too. I might as well say it straight out: Open Mics have nothing to do with good writing. Don’t get… Read More About open mics…
Ian Gouge, Writer 
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