At the end of this month I'm giving up work. More or less by choice. It is a step that has been labelled in various ways by various people, me included: 'retirement' seems the most common, with the upcoming period a 'glide-path to retirement' - after all, I'm not officially qualified to be there yet...! … Continue reading The Daunting Prospect of Reinvention
There is a section toward the end of Philip Roth's "The Human Stain" where one of the book's characters, Ernestine, confronts the author/narrator about her life and the life of her family, African-Americans from New Jersey. What follows from Ernestine/Roth seems to me - a white, non-American - a brilliant and powerful exposé of racism, … Continue reading “The Human Stain”
According to the trade publication, The Bookseller, in the UK today - Thursday 3rd September 2020 - some 600 books are going to be published. Yes, 600! On one day! Books from 'big' publishing houses as well as the myriad of independent and Indie publishers. The suggestion is that this figure represents a catch-up from … Continue reading Did you know this? Stunning…
Carolyn Forché's "In the Lateness of the World" is a collection of poetry about which it's very easy to be ambivalent. Not because the work is insipid or dull - far from it! - but because for me it veers toward both extremes on the good-bad poetry continuum. If I start with the more negative … Continue reading “In the Lateness of the World”
Some books just don't travel well through time. "To Have and Have Not" is, I suspect, one such. There are all too obvious examples of where some of the words Hemingway uses - and the prejudices expressed - are clearly not acceptable to a modern twenty-first century readership, and the dated nature of language is … Continue reading “To Have and Have Not”
Although I first came across Anthony Doerr through his novel "All the Light We Cannot See", if you wanted a more subtle introduction then his collection of short stories then "Memory Wall" wouldn't be a bad place to start. The stories are engaging and well-written, and you somehow feel 'safe' in Doerr's hands. The subject … Continue reading “Memory Wall”
I wonder if that's what 'Life' does, getting in the way, forcing us to take our eyes off the ball, allowing us to forget what's important... In many respects it's also the easy option, isn't it? A kind of abdication. Knowing what matters to us, believing in it, keeping the faith - all of that … Continue reading Rediscovering what’s important?
"Thirteen Ways of Looking" is the novella headlining this collection where it is joined by three much shorter stories. Although the subject matter of each is different, they all share a number of characteristics like tone, voice and style. More importantly, they also have in common the fact that they are really well-written. I admit … Continue reading “Thirteen Ways of Looking”
Call me old-fashioned, but... I'm currently reading a novel - a proper novel, published by a reputable and global publishing company - in which a heinous crime has been committed: an instance of the 21st-century malaise of using 'amount' when one should use 'number'. Who got it wrong? The author in the first place? Or … Continue reading Number vs. Amount: why is it so difficult?
We often encounter difficulty when trying to reconcile our memories of events with what actually happened. In the almost inevitable mis-match, our mind plays tricks on us, and what we have recently learned and how we have recently lived gets in the way and colours the past. Pressed to recall his own life, the challenge … Continue reading My latest novel – “A Pattern of Sorts” – published today!
Ian Gouge - Writer 