Fiction
-
As an in-depth curation of a publisher’s interactions with one of his authors, Dear Mr. Beckett is something of a Curate’s Egg – but what makes it entirely fascinating is that the author concerned is none other than Samuel Beckett, and the publisher the visionary Barney Rosset (who also successfully fought to get Lady Chatterly’s…
-
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s In the Labyrinth is, in many ways, more Kafka than Kafka. Most of the time you have no true idea of what’s going on – but that’s precisely the point. The structure isn’t linear, the tense flits between past and present, characters appear and disappear at will, and in many ways every page…
-
In many respects Samantha Harvey’s The Shapeless Unease is a remarkable little book, an easy fusion between fiction, memoir, and a battle with insomnia. It’s no wonder it was long-listed for the Booker Prize. For once the blurb on the back cover is perfectly accurate. I picked up my copy in the remainders section of…
-
I’m not a particular fan of rules and guidance when it comes to writing fiction i.e. “show don’t tell”, “a story needs a beginning, middle and end” etc. There are multiple ways to construct a narrative and tell a story; I don’t see why we should restrict ourselves. Having said that, in reading Robert Seethaler’s…
-
Simply excellent. In Red Sky in Morning Paul Lynch has woven an authentic and engrossing tale of desperate men, one who strives to escape, the other bent to do the catching. This is a brutal tale of misplaced men in a country that doesn’t want them. Lynch’s portrait of Faller is magnificent, n animal for…