thu 31/10/2024

book reviews and features

Extract from Sauntering: Writers Walk Europe, introduced and edited by Duncan Minshull

theartsdesk

Wandering, ambling, sauntering. The last, least heard of the three, captures a sense of leisurely aimlessness: a jolly meander unbound by destination, admitting none of the qualms of...

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Nina-Sophia Miralles: Glossy - debut author takes on Vogue and the Condé Nasties

Markie Robson-Scott

“Bringing out a luxury magazine in a blitzkrieg is rather like dressing for dinner in the jungle,” wrote Audrey Withers, editor of British Vogue, in December...

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Brenda Navarro: Empty Houses review - the pains and pressures of motherhood

Daniel Lewis

The horror novelist Sarah Langan recently compared motherhood to being treated like a game of Operation. “The point of the game is to correct us...

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Kazuo Ishiguro: Klara and the Sun review - what makes us human?

India Lewis

Unsettling, unremitting and psychologically stark, Klara and the Sun has all the hallmarks of a...

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Katherine Angel: Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again review – the complexities of consent

Lydia Bunt

Katherine Angel borrows the title of her latest book, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, from an essay by Foucault. The phrase parodies the supposed...

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Frances Larson: Undreamed Shores review - journeys without maps

Boyd Tonkin

Beatrice Blackwood had lived in a clifftop village between surf and jungle on Bougainville Island, part of the Solomon archipelago in the South Pacific. She hunted, fished and grew crops with...

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Joseph Andras: Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us review - injustice and tenderness in the Algerian War

Daniel Lewis

Joseph Andras wastes no time. “Not a proud and forthright rain, no. A stingy rain. Mean. Playing dirty.” This is how his debut novel kicks off, and it’s a fitting start for his retelling of the...

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Karla Suárez: Havana Year Zero review - maths, phones and mysteries in down-at-heel Cuba

Boyd Tonkin

Havana, 1993. Far away, the fall of the Soviet empire has suddenly stripped Fidel Castro’s Cuba of subsidy and...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Amina Cain on her first novel and her eternal fascination with suggestion

Jessica Payn

Amina Cain is a writer of near-naked spaces and roomy characters. Her debut collection of short fiction, I...

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Jackie Kay: Bessie Smith review – vivid writing about the Empress of the Blues

Sebastian Scotney

Blues singer Bessie Smith (1894-...

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