Daria Lavelle: Savouring the beyond
A DELICIOUSLY ORIGINAL supernatural thriller that reads like it could be a script for a mesmerising Punchdrunk production, Daria Lavelle’s Aftertaste blends food and ghosts with romance and menace. It’s lively, it’s colourful, it’s funny. It’s a feast of a story, boasting engaging characters and a riveting plot. The novel’s beating heart is Kostya, who...
Brenda Navarro: Beyond motherhood
Brenda Navarro’s evocative and powerful novel Empty Houses explores the pain of losing a child, the social impositions of motherhood, and the plight of Mexico’s disappeared and economically disadvantaged. It opens with the voice of a distraught mother whose autistic three-year-old boy Daniel is snatched away from her in a Mexico City park as she...
from Lumen
How might poetry help us articulate the body in illness, in work, and in love? Tiffany Atkinson’s fourth collection includes the sequence ‘Dolorimeter’, which won the 2014 Medicine Unboxed Prize. Taking fragments of speech and found text from a hospital residency at Bronglais Hospital in Aberystwyth to pay homage to the inventiveness and humour of...
Too close for comfort
In cities, crime rates rise with the temperature but I’ve often wondered how many murders happen because of summer holidays. After all, British murder rates spike at Christmas – all those long, workless, alcohol-soaked days closeted away from the real world with the people who know us best: our family. What surer crucible for psychological...
