Published in The Observer September 22, 2019
When published in Vigdis Hjorth’s native Norway in 2016, Will and Testament became both a bestseller and a literary scandal.
Continue reading “Review: Will and Testament, Vigdis Hjorth”Category: Books
Review: The Testaments, Margaret Atwood
Published in The Independent September 6, 2019
You don’t need me to tell you that this is the “literary event of the year”. Thirty-four years after her seminal novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood has published a sequel. It’s already shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Bookshops are staying open to midnight on release day.
Continue reading “Review: The Testaments, Margaret Atwood”Review: The Collection by Nina Leger – unflustered accounts of sex
Published in The Observer July 29, 2019
Nina Leger’s novella begins with a description of a woman taking a penis into her mouth: “She lets it grow heavy, take on warmth, breadth and shape… She moves away, and contemplates the erect penis.”
Continue reading “Review: The Collection by Nina Leger – unflustered accounts of sex”Review: Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry
Published by The Independent June 22, 2019
Two ageing, fading Irish gangsters sit in the port of Algeciras, watching and waiting for 23-year-old named Dilly, who they believe to be heading by ferry from Spain to Morocco. Actually, scrap that – there’s nothing faded about Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redman.
Continue reading “Review: Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry”Review: Frankkkistein by Jeanette Winterson
Published in The Independent May 24, 2019
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has certainly had a vivid afterlife: subject to countless adaptations, rewrites, and remakes. Jeanette Winterson is the latest to re-animate the 19th-century Gothic classic, both playfully and sometimes arduously bringing it into a contemporary world of smart-tech and artificial intelligence (AI).
Continue reading “Review: Frankkkistein by Jeanette Winterson”Review: The Punchdrunk Encylopaedia by Josephine Machon
Published in The TLS April 16, 2019
It’s no exaggeration to claim that Felix Barrett’s theatre company Punchdrunk has changed British theatre. Founded in 2000, Punchdrunk pioneered, and came to define, immersive theatre: where members of an audience roam around a found space itself rich in atmosphere and meaning, with non-linear narrative conveyed through dance, sound, lighting, audience interaction and hyper- detailed, installation-style design. The company created a version of small-town America inspired by David Lynch and Edward Hopper inside an abandoned Wapping warehouse for Faust (2006), and built a forest inside a vast disused factory in south London for The Firebird Ball (2005). Josephine Machon’s encyclopedia, including substantial contributions from many Punchdrunk key players, is a thorough account of the company’s eighteen-year history – though a few developments are skirted over in this fascinating, and at times irksome, guide to their practice.
Subscribers can read the full review here.
Review: The Parisian by Isabella Hammad
Published by The Independent April 12, 2019
You could call Isabella Hammad’s 550-page novel a sprawling, sweeping historical epic. It does chart a turbulent period of Palestinian history, from the end of the Ottoman empire and the First World War, through British rule and mass immigration of Jews as the Second World War looms.
Continue reading “Review: The Parisian by Isabella Hammad”Siri Hustvedt: ‘There is a morbid belief that women lack imagination’
Published in the i March 22, 2019
Siri Hustvedt’s new novel, Memories of the Future, has a narrator named SH. At the age of 61, she rediscovers a diary she wrote when she was 23, as well as her first attempt at a novel. The older narrator looks back on her first year living in New York with an eye that is both wry and beady, peering into the gaps between her records and her memories.
Continue reading “Siri Hustvedt: ‘There is a morbid belief that women lack imagination’”Review: Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
Published in The Independent on March 1, 2019
Marlon James won the Booker for A Brief History of Seven Killings, his bestselling novel about the attempted assassination of Bob Marley. Who knows what the judges will make of this gleeful and wholehearted leap into genre fiction: Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a vivid, bloody fantasy epic, playing out over more than 600 pages, complete with the sort of maps Tolkien would be proud of.
Continue reading “Review: Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James”Jane Austen’s unfinished novel comes to the stage
What happens to a novel’s characters when their author abandons them? I spoke to British playwright Laura Wade about bringing “The Watsons,” an unfinished novel by Jane Austen, to the stage, in a piece for the New York Times. Continue reading “Jane Austen’s unfinished novel comes to the stage”