Katherine Mansfield: ‘At the Bay’
However you choose to dissect her best work, (and she did do some that wasn’t all that), Katherine Mansfield was a revolutionary writer. She was a symbolist and a modernist and her stories were, according to katherinemansfield.com, the “first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot.” Commenting on Somerset Maugham’s ‘Rain’,...
Autumn and spring fiction highlights
Well, it’s certainly been a fantastic autumn for fiction. The two novels dominating this year’s fiction round-ups are Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning The Luminaries (Granta) and Donna Tartt’s eagerly anticipated third novel The Goldfinch (Little, Brown). The Luminaries is a tale of star-crossed lovers, murder, opium and séances – a Victorian pastiche in the...
Hits – and a miss – of 2013
The last twelve months have seen some exceptional works by some of my absolute favourite writers, as well as a handful of duffers from those who should know better. Here, then, is my highly subjective round-up of the year that just was. Books of the year Tenth of December by George Saunders (Bloomsbury) Any new...
Which would you choose?
In the December 2013 issue we launched our ‘Favourite Stories’ feature, with seven writers each introducing a short story which they feel stands out as a shining example of the form. Suzanne Berne picks out a perfect sketch from recent Nobel Prize winner and short-story stylist Alice Munro, Sophie Hannah weighs up Herman Melville’s ever-popular...
Mementoes of JFK
The assassination of John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963 has become a cliché. We are overfamiliar with the Zapruder footage of the moment of his death in a way inconceivable to those who lived through it. Fifty years ago, “where were you when Kennedy died?” was a question to inspire hushed conversation about a...
Rosa Rankin-Gee: Echoes from the island
Rosa Rankin-Gee’s wonderfully accomplished debut novel The Last Kings of Sark explores a friendship triangle developed over an intense summer on Sark island with repercussions that last for years. Emma Young catches up with her. The Last Kings of Sark won Shakespeare & Company’s inaugural Paris Literary Prize in 2011. Extremely-belated congratulations – I suspect...
Literature in your lifetime… and beyond
The printed ‘book’ – a physical thing made up of paper, type, ink and board – has been around now for over 500 years. It has served literature wonderfully: packaging it in cheap (sometimes beautiful) forms that have helped to sustain mass literacy. Few inventions have lasted longer, or done more good. The book may,...
Thread
She is in the labyrinth again. Darkness is seeping through her nostrils, into the corners of her mouth, around the edges of her eyeballs, trying to reach right inside. She pushes against it, one hand thrusting forward into the swell of shadows, the other behind her, closed around the unravelling spool. Each step costs all...
Save the Story
‘Save the Story’ is a library of favourite stories from around the world, retold for today’s children by some of the best contemporary writers. Each book is beautifully illustrated and accompanied by an author’s afterword describing its origin. The series was conceived by Alessandro Barricco, working in close collaboration with Scuola Holden in Turin, which...
Dedicated to…
The right book, given to the right person at the right time, can work wonders.* Spirits can be raised and horizons broadened; broken hearts can be mended, old flames rekindled, friendships reaffirmed. A book can say Sorry, and Thank You. A book can say I miss you, I love you, I forgive you; I never...
Oscar Zarate’s urban oasis
The tranquillity of a glorious early summer day on Hampstead Heath is interrupted when an angry blogger and a timid musician get embroiled in a tit-for-tat spat that threatens to escalate into a fractious but comical revenge drama worthy of Laurel and Hardy. So begins Oscar Zarate’s beautifully drawn graphic novel The Park, which charts...
The (S)crapbook tour
I was nervous about embarking on the promotional book tour for several reasons. Firstly, the book that I’m promoting is rubbish. I suppose a lot of foxes don’t even get around to writing a book, so in that respect I should give myself a pat on the back, but even when you consider that, it’s...
