Search

Posy Simmonds, a British comic artist, recently became the first Briton to win the prestigious Grand Prix at France's Angoulême International Comics Festival. Simmonds is known for her feminist themes and virtuosity in her artwork. She recently had a retrospective of her work at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, which was briefly disrupted by a bedbug infestation. Simmonds has had a long and varied career, transitioning from newspaper cartoonist to graphic novelist, and her work often comments on social issues such as everyday sexism. [Extracted from the article]

Marina Warner tells the story of her parents' unlikely marriage as memoir, fairy tale and tragedy. ESMOND AND ILIA: An Unreliable Memoir, by Marina Warner How many of us have [...]

A SHOCKBy Keith Ridgway In the Irish writer Keith Ridgway's audaciously offbeat novel ''Hawthorn & Child,'' two detectives pinball around northeast London trying to impose order on chance and coincidence. [...]

This question was at the forefront of my mind every time another pandemic novel arrived in the post. THE CULTURE THE CULTURE» Reviews Books "A writer will never be able to truly capture lockdown because they will never be able to capture with the right amount of granular detail the sheer number of television shows that people watch." Yet despite the interpretative problems, writers of so-called "pandemic novels" have largely turned their attention inwards, bypassing the bigger picture of the disease, instead concentrating on the necessarily intimate canvas of life under lockdown. My hope is that alongside the adaptations it's already made, the future will bring a wider range of perspectives on the crisis: novels written by and about frontline workers or medical professionals at the epidemiological coal face; by and about children growing up during the pandemic, too. [Extracted from the article]

HEATHCLIFF REDUX A Novella and StoriesBy Lily Tuck ''Of course I had read 'Wuthering Heights,''' reads the opening line of ''Heathcliff Redux.'' ''I read it years ago in high school, [...]

Next came Barbara Skelton, Weidenfeld's entanglement with whom began as an affair while Skelton was still married to one of Weidenfeld's own authors, Cyril Connolly. By focusing on the bigger names and titles with whom Weidenfeld worked, Harding ensures that this book has the widest appeal. THE CULTURE How to distil so colourful and complex a life as that of a man who arrived in London just before the Second World War as a penniless Austrian-Jewish refugee, but went on to become Baron Weidenfeld of Chelsea and one of the leading lights of 20th-century publishing, whose reach and power impacted the culture of ideas across Europe, Britain and America?. [Extracted from the article]

BOOKS & CULTURE The Virago Modern Classics are not finished, and never will be", Carmen Callil, founder of Virago Press, wrote in the Guardian in 2008. Meanwhile, Becky Brown, a specialist literary estates agent in Curtis Brown's heritage division, trusts the critical judgement of a familiar - if somewhat unexpected - name: the modernist novelist Elizabeth Bowen, who reviewed a surprisingly eclectic range of books for Tatler in the 1940s and 1950s. And two years ago I started work as an editor at McNally Editions, the publishing imprint of the New York City-based independent bookstore chain McNally Jackson. "What I see as Virago or Persephone's core market (and indeed Penguin's and Vintage's) were classics readers who were looking for books with a critical seal of approval", says Brown, speaking about the "subtle shift" she's witnessed in terms of both what readers are looking for and how these books are being presented to them. [Extracted from the article]

Silver Moon Women's Bookshop, located on Charing Cross Road in London, was a significant institution for women seeking feminist literature and a sense of sisterhood. Founded in 1984 by Sue Butterworth, Jane Cholmeley, and Jane Anger, the bookshop provided a space for women to explore feminist ideas and literature. Despite facing challenges such as Section 28 and competition from other feminist bookshops, Silver Moon thrived for 17 years. The bookshop hosted notable authors and became a gathering place for women readers and writers. However, rising rents and the emergence of online retailers like Amazon eventually led to its closure in 2001. Jane Cholmeley has now written a memoir that celebrates the legacy of Silver Moon and its impact on the lives of its patrons. [Extracted from the article]

Sigrid Nunez's novel, "The Vulnerables," explores life under lockdown in Manhattan in early 2020. The narrator, an older woman writer, finds herself confined with an angry young college dropout named Vetch and a narcissistic parrot named Eureka. The novel focuses on the narrator's daily activities, interactions with Vetch and Eureka, and memories from her past. Nunez's writing style is warm and inviting, and the novel is part of a trilogy that addresses loss, grief, and love. "The Vulnerables" is a unique and urgent piece of fiction that captures the inertia of lockdown. [Extracted from the article]

STILL LIFE WITH MONKEY By Katharine Weber 287 pp. Paul Dry Books. Paper, $16.95. Katharine Weber's seventh book takes its title from a work by the French Rococo artist Jean-Baptiste [...]

An interview with British author Penelope Lively is presented. Lively talks about her education and childhood in Egypt, her relationship with her governess, Lucy, and writing children's fiction. Additional topics of discussion include novels by several authors including Henry James and Ford Madox Ford, several of her works including "Ammonites & Leaping Fish" and "Moon Tiger," the notion of contingency, and her thoughts on historical fiction.

Elizabeth Strout's novel "Tell Me Everything" brings together the lives of Lucy Barton and Olive Kit-teridge in the small town of Crosby, Maine. The narrative explores their friendship as they share stories of people they have known, emphasizing the idea that every life is worthy of documentation. However, the novel lacks a clear focus and feels busy and unfocused, with the narrative jumping between central and peripheral characters. While Strout's previous works showcased poignant and raw portrayals of loneliness and suffering, this novel falls short and becomes confusing and overly cute. [Extracted from the article]

UNDERGROUND FUGUE By Margot Singer 290 pp. Melville House. $25.99. Margot Singer's first novel is set in London during the summer of the deadly terrorist bombings of 2005, but it's [...]

"All Fours" is a novel by Miranda July that follows the story of a semi-famous artist in her early forties who embarks on a solo road trip from Los Angeles to New York. The protagonist, a self-proclaimed "Parker," seeks validation through her art. However, her journey takes an unexpected turn when she becomes infatuated with a younger man and finds herself stuck in a motel, lying to her family. July's unique style shines through in this oestrogen-fueled take on the midlife crisis, offering a smart, funny, and tender exploration of a woman's journey through menopause. [Extracted from the article]

About halfway through Patricia Engel's sumptuous second novel, Reina Castillo, a young woman fleeing the demons of her past, stands on the deck of a boat contemplating her first dive [...]

Michael Cunningham's novel "Day" is a three-act story that follows a small group of family and friends living in New York City. Each act takes place on April 5th of consecutive years, starting in 2019 and ending in 2021. The novel explores the impact of an unnamed disease, likely referencing the COVID-19 pandemic, on the characters' lives. Cunningham's writing style focuses on the characters' emotions and experiences, although the second act, which consists of letters, is less polished. Overall, "Day" offers an enchanting narrative despite some minor flaws. [Extracted from the article]

By Octavia Bright (Canongate, £16.99) "I walked so hard and so fast in the winter of 2013 that I wore right through a pair of red Doc Martens." This, the opening line of writer and broadcaster Octavia Bright's memoir, echoes a host of recent first-person confessionals, the writing of which has become something of a rite of passage for so many young literary women. "Every story you tell about yourself is an attempt to organise the messy experience of living", she writes early on, but Alzheimer's makes things untidier than usual, its victims "liv[ing] outside of narrative" itself. [Extracted from the article]

Byline: Lucy Scholes The charming debauchery of Britain's literati during the Blitz. September 26, 1940 As the blackout falls, 41-year-old Anglo-Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen is on air-raid-protection duty in the [...]

Like NDiaye's previous novels published in English, it's elegantly translated by Jordan Stump, who excels at capturing the beguiling combination of disquiet and clarity that marks her almost hypnotic prose. Jordan Stump (MacLehose Press, £12) Marie NDiaye's latest novel is inspired in part by the recent film Saint Omer (2022), which NDiaye wrote with the acclaimed French director Alice Diop. As disturbing as her client's crimes are, though, it's Marlyne's husband Gilles who unsettles Maitre Susane more. [Extracted from the article]

By Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape, £18.99) Enright returns to the familiar ground of tangled familial relationships in this, her accomplished eighth novel. Nell's chapters are told in the first person - inti-mate, slippery, intense - while Carmel's point-of-view is rendered with the slight distance of the close third-person. The novel alternates between the perspectives of mother and daughter, interspersed with examples of McDaragh's poems (which aren't just convincing but worth praise in and of their own right). [Extracted from the article]

Patchett layers her dual narratives with expertise and ease; each character's various responses to Lara's story - her own included - allowing for a slow unfurling of themselves. But now, their lives curtailed by lockdown and their energies focused on the back-breaking cherry picking, Lara's girls finally convince her to tell them everything; namely plenty of details about her romance with her co-star, Peter Duke - then a newbie like Lara, but whose star would ascend as hers fell, going on to become an Oscar-winning household name. Ann Patchett Spring 2020 in Michigan, and Lara and Joe's three adult daughters have returned to the family's cherry farm to ride out the pandemic. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on the career and recent recognition of Muriel Box, one of Britain's pioneering female film directors, highlighting her accomplishments. Topics include her Academy Award for best original screenplay, her accomplishments and feminist contributions, and the recent attention her films are receiving with new restorations and screenings.