Clip from the Market Rasen Mail: Really excited to be performing Crash again tomorrow, plus further readings of poetry and prose an hour later! Click on the image above to be taken to the booking page, or the button below for the event website. The WordFest website
Category: Fiction
Starting stories, minutiae, and scratching an itch…
Some recent posts from my Substack site: "Writing until the light goes out" "Writing until the light goes out"
New books out this week!
And if you go to the website you'll even find a post about kissing.... "Writing until the light goes out" "Writing until the light goes out"
“Collected Stories” – Peter Carey
It has been many years since I read any Peter Carey: Oscar and Lucinda, and I remember nothing of it. Perhaps because of that I was somewhat thrown by his Collected Stories. Not in the sense of how well-written they are, but rather the strange dystopian worlds many of them seem to inhabit. There is … Continue reading “Collected Stories” – Peter Carey
“17 Alma Road” highlighted on Portobello Book Blog
click to go to Portobello Book Blog
Words of wisdom? You decide…
Some recent posts from my Substack site: "Writing until the light goes out" "Writing until the light goes out"
“Birnam Wood”
Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood is a strange amalgam of a book. For the first two thirds it meanders slowly along without seeming to be getting anywhere particularly significant - and then, as if it has been injected with some illicit substance, suddenly speeds up and turns into 'a thriller' with an ending that has more … Continue reading “Birnam Wood”
“Getting Through”
There is a theme of regret and missed opportunity running through John McGahern's short story collection, Getting Through. Mainly these involve broken relationships, between man and woman, father and son: 'Sierra Leone', 'Along the Edges'. As with High Ground and other stories, McGahern's prose has a depth which belies the narrative somehow. They are incidents … Continue reading “Getting Through”
“Sojourn”
Amit Chaudhuri's Sojourn is an odd little book. A curio. It's like a series of Polaroid photographs strung together to make an album - though obviously made up of words. Those snapshot images represent a journey through Berlin; less so a physical journey than a metaphysical one. The protagonist learns and forgets things along the … Continue reading “Sojourn”
“A Girl is a Half-formed Thing”
Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is a difficult book to read. Firstly this is because of the style in which it is written: fragmented, jerky, linguistically inaccurate, often illiterate. It seems like stream of consciousness with about a quarter of the words removed. And with stuttering where there are words. Impossible for … Continue reading “A Girl is a Half-formed Thing”
Ian Gouge - Writer 