Review by Marianne Knowles
The Boy Named Crow … Johnnie Walker … Kafka … wild fish storms … talking cats … Colonel Sanders … and soldiers long lost from battle – these are not elements you may expect to create a spectacularly sound literary novel. It is not until these aspects are folded and shuffled back [...]
Author Archives: Guest
Review: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
March 28, 2009 – 11:16 am
Review: Titus Groan/Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
January 21, 2009 – 4:31 pm
Site map Review by Ollie Wright
These books, like the castle they describe, are massive and uncompromising, ornately, obsessively detailed, with everything minutely and exactly described. Mervyn Peake’s fine draughtsmanship is mirrored in his prose; he has clearly visualised every aspect of his Gormenghast, the place and its denizens.
The first volume, Titus Groan, follows the [...]
Review: Author, Author by David Lodge
October 12, 2008 – 12:54 pm
Review by Marianne Knowles
During the summer of 2005, I came across a book called Author, Author in a bookshop in Japan, which I was very pleased about. Not only was this book in
English amongst myriad Manga and totally indefinable fiction, (I had not, and have still not learned Japanese) but it was also written [...]
Review: Taking Pictures by Anne Enright
October 2, 2008 – 2:56 pm
Review by Katherine Woodfine
The latest short story collection from Man Booker prizewinner Anne Enright is well named Taking Pictures. This is, after all, a book which resembles a gallery of photographs, conjuring up a vivid series of grainy mug-shots, faded family portraits, creased holiday snaps, simultaneously commonplace and yet alive with nostalgia and resonance. [...]
Review: The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
September 8, 2008 – 10:59 am
Review by Jen Newby
Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet explodes the flat stereotypical characters that abound in modern fiction. Although Durrell wrote the quartet during the late fifties his writing remains undated. Vibrant characters writhe off the pages, and embed themselves into your mind, closer acquaintances than fictional constructs. You cannot forget Scobie, the decrepit cross-dressing [...]