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Grief in the time of Covid: some reflections on lossApril 4, 2020 - 9:13 pm
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The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen review – confessions of a literary outsider
The Danish writer reflects on success, addiction and divorces in three volumes of compulsive autofiction: Childhood, Youth and Dependency Tove Ditlevsen. Photograph: Per Pejstrup/Press Association Images For the four decades after the outbreak of the second world war, Tove Ditlevsen was one of Denmark’s most famous and extravagantly tortured writers, whose many identities – dreamy […]
Tiger by Polly Clark review – passionate tale of the wild under threat
In the three years since Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement berated literature for its failure to rise to the challenge of climate breakdown, fiction writers have made up for lost time. Indeed cli-fi, once a subset of science fiction, has been so quickly subsumed by realism that its days as a self-contained genre may be numbered. The […]
Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates
Time travel stories are seldom really about time, or travel, and Joyce Carol Oates’ 46th novel is no exception. Audacious, chilling and darkly playful, her thought experiment about belonging and otherness is quick to ignite, but admirably slow to reveal the full extent of its dystopian proposition. Read more
The Gloaming by Kirsty Logan review – mermaids and mysteries on a Scottish island
Emotionally, an island is always more than a land-mass surrounded by water. As metaphors, islands can denote freedom, imprisonment and everything in between, while as backdrops, they invite extravagant experiment. When it comes to the latter, Kirsty Logan has form. Her debut novel The Gracekeepers, an environmental fairytale set in a lush, futuristic waterscape, won wide […]
America City by Chris Beckett review – dark vision of our future
The Arthur C Clarke winner’s dystopia is set in a future US ravaged by climate change and war The signposts have been around for decades, and the territory is increasingly well mapped. So while the past may be a foreign country, the future is an increasingly familiar one – in which we continue to be […]
No Dominion by Louise Welsh – a deeply satisfying conclusion
According to futurologists, a baby born today will live to 100. But what do they know? In her Plague Times trilogy, Louise Welsh trashes such blithe predictions, setting the grim reaper to work in a not unlikely near-future scenario: a flu-like epidemic ravaging the world’s population and leaving survivors plunged into chaos. If the landscape is […]
Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney – foul play and doomed love in the Arctic
Unforgiving landscapes have served Stef Penney well: she first depicted them to heart-catching effect in her Costa-winning debut The Tenderness of Wolves, a historical adventure of abduction and quest, cultural assimilation and domination set in the Canadian wilderness. A meticulously researched drama set among British Gypsies, The Invisible Ones, followed. In the stately, glittering iceberg that is Under […]
The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine
Now out in English, Leine’s astonishing, hallucinatory journey into the frozen heart of Denmark’s colonial darkness is inspired by events during the reign of the mad Danish king, Christian VII. Read more (outside link)
Slade House by David Mitchell
“Tonight feels like a board game co-designed by MC Escher on a bender and Stephen King in a fever,” observes a spooked member of a university’s paranormal society in David Mitchell’s manically ingenious new novel, Slade House. It’s hard not to read the assessment as the author’s compressed verdict on his own Halloween-timed offering, but the book is much more […]
Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick de Witt – a comic tale with a touching protagonist
One of the great joys of comic fiction is that it can do anything it wants. It can explore the sexual possibilities of a giant salami, provoke empathy with a merciless killer, or throw the English language into a blender and make it taste like high gastronomy despite the weird colour and the lumps – […]
We are Pirates by Daniel Handler- A Funny, Creepy Voyage for All Ages
In darkly interesting times, authors who can satisfy a previously unidentified hunger have the world at their feet. Writing as Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler gave young readers a drug they didn’t know they craved until they tried it. The wild gothic of the Unfortunate Events series was the literary equivalent of a scorpion lollipop: a macabre treat. […]
House of Ashes by Monique Roffey – the story of an insurrection
Gun-toting rebels seize government buildings, take hostages and appear on state television to announce the overthrow of a “corrupt” regime. The army intervenes, and the insurgents become the heroes of the moment – or its cannon fodder. The BBC arrives. Welcome to the generic coup d’etat. Read more