Iosi Havilio: Getting away with it
Iosi Havilio’s Petite Fleur is a virtuoso meditation on life, death, depression, anxiety, temptation, recovery and miraculous resurrection. Narrator José is down in the dumps when his job at a fireworks factory goes up in flames, but as the gloom lifts he gains an unexpected talent for guilt-free murder. Establishing that his victims seem always...
The house by the woods
It is a few minutes past one in the morning when the front door slams shut. Anyone remaining in the house – but there is no one – would be able to hear, through the closed door, the footsteps of three people hurrying across the porch and down the stairs. There are voices, too –...
Julie Myerson: Seeing the bad stuff
The Stopped Heart is Julie Myerson’s ninth novel (she has also written one novella and four works of non-fiction). It may just be her best book yet as it manages to be both a page-turning thriller and a serious exploration of how abuse works. If that sounds off-putting, it shouldn’t be – whilst her subject...
Murder symptoms
I dreamt last night that I was a child and alone at home, feeling sick. I kept on vomiting, and there was no one to help me. Distressing. I did actually find myself in this situation several times, after my mother died. Domestics never lasted more than a year at our place – my father...
An author faces his public – and grows the brand
The author caught the tube and went walkabout. He walked through the carriages like a mid-thirtysomething man looking for women in a nightclub, with passengers in the role of the potential victims of his chat-up lines. He was looking for something. Five years ago, he’d have been sure to have found it. This time, his...
