1. The Large Door started life as short story. The novel is better. I haven’t read the short story but The Large Door is better than most novels, and as novels are more often better than short stories (deeper, richer and more enriching) there is a high probability that this novel is better than the short story from which it is derived. Expanding short stories into novels is risky. There is a high probability of failure. Most novels that start out as short stories aren’t very good. Ian... [read more]
Writing about uprooting one’s life and going off to live in the wild has a long-established history in America – take Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild. But as with many long-established literary traditions, these illustrious narratives have been characterised by the expression and validation of a male-centric discourse, often implicit in the rugged individualism pursued through tales of self-discovery. This is where... [read more]
It has always seemed to me that of the two most notorious literary recluses of the late 20th century, JD Salinger and Thomas Pynchon, it was Salinger whose whereabouts provoked the most interest. Perhaps this is because Salinger was more visible in the early part of his career, and his withdrawal thus seemed more puzzling, or perhaps it was just that Catcher in the Rye had been such an overwhelming success (fleeing from which may have been one motivating factor in his behaviour) that fans... [read more]
Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, trans. Frank Wynne, Animalia
reviewed by Stanley Portus
At her father’s funeral, a young girl watches on as the villagers discuss what to do about a toad that has made its way into the open grave overnight and has been swimming back and forward in the mud. As the toad sits on top of the lowered coffin, the crowd agree it is a bad omen and the man cannot be buried with it there. The toad, one protests, is the devil. It is decided that the young girl is the only person small enough and in a bad enough state, in her scraggy, unwashed clothes, to be... [read more]
There’s an element of musical chairs to Lines Off, HugoWilliams’ first collection since I Knew the Bride in 2014. Whilst the music plays, Williams remembers the ‘faded photo strips’ of his past with characteristic swagger and self-effacing humour. He takes us back to his school coming out ball, ‘We were drinking and driving, barely surviving’; he takes us to Paris to fall for Tara Browne who ‘went out into the night, / dancing your crazy doodle-step/on the pedals of your Lotus... [read more]
Clare Carlisle, Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard
reviewed by Ruby Guyatt
‘Joy is the present tense, with the whole emphasis upon the present.’ Clare Carlisle may not quote these words, written by Søren Kierkegaard in 1848, but her lyrical biography of the Danish philosopher-poet nevertheless performs them.
Unlike much writing about philosophy, Carlisle’s prose is imaginative and lucid; unlike most biographies, much of Philosopher of the Heart is written in the present tense, inviting the reader to accompany Kierkegaard as he walks Copenhagen’s cobbled... [read more]
As a God Might Be is a wonderful and weird novel that takes you further and deeper than many others – while yet leaving a sense of emotional frustration by its final, 599th page. To put my cards on the table immediately: I couldn’t stop reading the book, but also closed it repeatedly with a sense of impatience. It’s a curious thing to wolf down a novel that you also think dodges valuable questions – there is an undoubted skill in that. I cannot but recommend you read it for... [read more]
Sinéad Gleeson, Constellations: Reflections from Life
reviewed by Liam Harrison
Sinéad Gleeson’s Constellations opens with a series of epigraphs. One of them is from Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts: ‘Empirically speaking, we are made of star stuff. Why aren’t we talking more about that?’ Constellations is in dialogue with an array of literary reference points, but particularly with Nelson’s argonaut analogy, which presents the body not as something static, but as a series of makings and un-makings. Gleeson explores this star stuff, the matter that makes us –... [read more]
Daniel Trilling, Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe
reviewed by Daniel Whittall
It has become all too easy in the last couple of years, as media coverage of refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants arriving in Europe has waned, to look disparagingly and somewhat smugly across the Atlantic at Donald Trump’s blunt approach to border politics. Overt calls for the building of a wall (or, more accurately, the completion of an already partially-constructed fence), coupled with footage of children separated from their parents and kept in cages, have allowed citizens in... [read more]
Dror Burstein’s novel Muck, translated into English by Gabriel Levine, is a re-envisioning of the biblical Book of Jeremiah filled with a strange and beautiful originality. Burstein draws a parallel between ancient and modern times, but through a ridiculous, slightly futuristic, and dystopian reconfiguration of present-day reality. Muck, like our world, has a Guinness Book of World Records, with one character hoping to enter its pantheon by filling a stadium with largest bowl of hummus in... [read more]
