A small confession. I had no real idea what was going on in Tamaz Chiladze's "The Brueghel Moon" - though I suspect this says more about me than the book! It was the first time (to the best of my knowledge) that I've read any Georgian fiction, and whether my confusion had anything to do … Continue reading “The Brueghel Moon”
Category: Fiction
“The Black Snow”
The language in Paul Lynch's "The Black Snow" possesses a kind of sustained lyricism which blends the poetic, the archaic, and the rural vocabulary of old Ireland. If you're not au fait with the language, occasionally you can get lost in it (in the sense of not being quite sure what is being said) and … Continue reading “The Black Snow”
Book trailers
Over the last few weeks I have been generating short video trailers for my books (most are less than a minute long). Here they all are collected in one place!
“Ham on Rye”
I have just read Charles Bukowski's Ham on Rye in double-quick time. It's urgent, powerful, raw - and like Henry Chinaski himself, doesn't pull any punches. It's a book which also peels back layers on society, on belonging (and not belonging), on the treadmill of vacuous routine. Pointlessness is never very far away, and romance … Continue reading “Ham on Rye”
“The City and its Uncertain Walls”
Having read just about everything he's written, it's fair to say that I'm a huge fan of Haruki Murakami. On that basis, I started reading "The City and its Uncertain Walls" with a degree of relish. However, whilst in many respects "City" is typical Murakami, there are a couple of things that bother me about … Continue reading “The City and its Uncertain Walls”
February’s best Substack posts
"when you see anything of mine that you don’t like remember that I’m sincere in doing it and that I’m working toward something." - Ernest Hemingway A selection of links to recent posts from my Substack site. "Writing until the light goes out" "Writing until the light goes out"
17 Alma Road – a trailer
“Held”
Given Anne Michaels is also a poet, it is unsurprising to find there is something lyrical and musical about her prose. "Held" is filled with splendidly musical writing. Indeed, many of her phrases and sentences would not be out of place in a poem. This characteristic is undoubtedly one of the reasons I found "Held" … Continue reading “Held”
“Orbital”
I can see why Samantha Harvey's "Orbital" won the 2024 Booker Prize: it's a sustained piece of bravura writing. However... ... too soon it started to feel like a travelog, a geography lesson. I stopped caring about whether the spacecraft was orbiting over Kazakstan, Alaska, or Milton Keynes; the places and countries - and the … Continue reading “Orbital”
“Gliff”
Like so many books these days, Ali Smith's "Gliff" presents an immediate challenge to a reader expecting a traditionally formatted narrative: the text isn't justified. This may be a small thing, but it can throw you at first - that is, until you get used to it. And the way she handles conversation (no quotation … Continue reading “Gliff”
Ian Gouge - Writer 