It’s not often you get to peek inside the publishing industry and read a manuscript before major overhauling. The original scroll for On The Road, for example, is more rambling, explicit and lacking in punctuation than it’s fully published counterpart – but follows much of the same beats (no pun intended.) Go Set A Watchman is a whole other beast. The story is now a familiar one to anyone who has glimpsed at a newspaper in the last few months; a manuscript delivered in the […]
Filled with unsettling thoughts but ultimately life-affirming, this is a strange and quirky novel about love, delusions and dependency from a unique voice.
Miranda July is a defiantly ‘indie’ director. Her films are filled with odd juxtapositions and unusual dialogue, soundtracked by circuit-bent 80’s synths and filled with whimsical ideas. Following a unique collection of short stories, The First Bad Man is her debut novel, and one that lives up to her distinctive sensibilities. Cheryl is a neurotic middle-aged woman who lives by herself. She lives a quiet and rigid life with everything in its right place, and tries to avoid doing anything as it leaves less of […]
A dense and elaborate historical novel about fading beauty, peppered with intriguing anachronisms.
Sir Kenelm Digby and Venetia Stanley were one of the most spoken-about couples of the 17th century. Sir Kenelm was a scientist, an alchemist and an adventurer, while his wife was known as the most beautiful woman at court. Copies of her portrait were passed about and her radiance was known for miles around, which has turned her from a witty young woman into a self-obsessed and beauty-hungry lady. Looking for ways to keep her beauty, Venetia starts to visit an apothecary who concocts a […]
This is more about me than the book.
In How to Build a Girl Caitlin Moran manages to write a story of teenaged angst that so closely resembles my own experiences that I though she had perhaps stolen my diary and just added a lot (like, a lot, a lot) more sex. Except I didn’t keep a diary in those days. (Now you would call it a journal, and be really precious about it). How to Build a Girl is the story of Johanna Morrigan, a working-class girl in 90s England who hates […]
Joseph Conrad Meets Graham Greene
The Strangler Vine was long listed for the 2014 Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction and the description — historical fiction set in early 19th-century India featuring a green soldier, a wizened political operative and Thuggees — made it sound too good to pass up. Images of Indiana Jones came to mind, but Carter offers her readers so much more than that pulpy comic-booky fare. Trained as a journalist, she delivers a meticulously researched political novel that reminded me of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and […]
Not fun like I wanted it to be.
I liked this, didn’t love it. I think Austin Grossman and I just don’t blend well as reader/writer. And it all started out so well! The book begins from the point of view of Dr. Impossible as he reflects from prison on his life and career as a supervillain. He has been arrested twelve times now, after having almost destroyed the world and/or conquered it, also twelve times. His nemesis is CoreFire, leader of a group of superheroes not unlike the Avengers. The world they live in […]
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