book reviews and features
Clemens Meyer: Dark Satellites review - eccentric orbits![]()
In Clemens Meyer’s new collection of short stories Dark Satellites (translated from German by Kate... Read more... |
Ilya Kaminsky: Deaf Republic - silence as 'a soul's noise'![]()
"The deaf don’t believe in silence. Silence is the invention of the hearing." This is one of two author’s "Notes" to Ilya Kaminsky’s latest... Read more... |
Jeet Thayil: Low – grief’s seedy distractions![]()
Like many writers, Jeet Thayil is a bit of an outsider. And, if his track record is anything to go by, he has been happy to keep it that way. The poet,... Read more... |
Deborah Orr: Motherwell review - memoir, but so much more![]()
Published in the year following Orr’s death at the age of 57, Motherwell is an analysis of the author’s ... Read more... |
Francine Toon: Pine review – trauma and terror in the Highlands![]()
Supernatural and Gothic stories have always haunted the misty borderlands between high and popular culture. The finest manage to hover between page-turning genre tales and what counts as... Read more... |
Nathalie Léger: Exposition review – mysteries, rumours and facts![]()
Nathalie Léger’s superbly original Exposition is a biographical novel meditating on the nature of ... Read more... |
Rosamund Lupton: Three Hours review - gripping thriller with a Macbeth twist![]()
This is not a drill. Lock down, evacuation. An active school shooter is on the loose, actually more than one: two or three men in balaclavas with automatic shotguns. But this isn’t a high school... Read more... |
Best of 2019: Books![]()
In a year that saw some notable highs (Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic) and some stonking lows (... Read more... |
Michael Hunter: The Decline of Magic review - when mockery killed witches![]()
During a single day of bloated idleness last week, I managed to watch three televised ghost stories, adapted from the works of Charles Dickens and a brace of Jameses: MR and Henry. Christmas,... Read more... |
Nalini Singh: A Madness of Sunshine review – a lacklustre thriller![]()
Nalini Singh's debut thriller thrusts us into Golden Cove, a small coastal town in New Zealand at "the... Read more... |
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