These six short stories are almost a novel, interlinked by characters who drift and reconnect with one another in the way friends do, living a big-city, post-university life. And this is Calder’s canvas: young adulthood, and a generation simultaneously bound to one another via social media and yet lost in a disconnected modern world.
Continue reading “Review: Reward System, Gem Calder”Category: Books
Inês De Castro: The macabre tale of the ‘skeleton queen’
It’s a tale as old as time – two lovers unjustly torn apart. But while the story of King Pedro I and his queen Inês De Castro has shades of Romeo and Juliet in its set up, it ends up somewhere altogether more macabre – imagine if Shakespeare’s tale swerved into horror movie territory in the final act.
Continue reading “Inês De Castro: The macabre tale of the ‘skeleton queen’”Review: Affair of the Heart, Michael Billington
Published in The TLS December 10, 2021
When Michael Billington stepped down as lead theatre critic for the Guardian in 2019, after almost fifty years, it was seen as the end of an era.
Continue reading “Review: Affair of the Heart, Michael Billington”Review: Assembly, Natasha Brown
Published in The Observer May 31, 2021
Within a neat 100 pages, Natasha Brown’s precise, powerful debut novel says more about Britain’s colonial legacy and what it’s like trying to exist within that as a black British woman than most could achieve with three times the space.
Continue reading “Review: Assembly, Natasha Brown”Why Alice is the ultimate icon of children’s books
Published in BBC Culture May 12, 2021
For books that are all about surprising transformations, it should perhaps be no real surprise that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are among the most frequently adapted and reinterpreted stories ever written.
Continue reading “Why Alice is the ultimate icon of children’s books”Review: Luster, Raven Leilani
Published in The Observer January 17, 2021
Luster sails into 2021 on clouds of praise, vapour trails of hype streaming behind it. “The most delicious novel I’ve read,” says Candice Carty-Williams; “brutal – and brilliant” opines Zadie Smith. Perhaps she would say that, being Raven Leilani’s mentor and former tutor at NYU.
Continue reading “Review: Luster, Raven Leilani”Review: The Prophets, Robert Jones Jr
Published in The Observer January 4, 2021
In a letter to the reader at the start of Robert Jones Jr’s debut novel, he says he was compelled to write the book after hearing voices insisting he ask the question “Did Black queer people exist in the distant past?” and then share the answer: of course they did.
Continue reading “Review: The Prophets, Robert Jones Jr”Review: On Connection, Kae Tempest
Published in The Observer October 25, 2020
Kae Tempest has added one more string to an already crowded bow: On Connection is the first nonfiction work by this Mercury prize-winning musician, Ted Hughes award-winning poet, acclaimed playwright, novelist, and chief creative chronicler of the last decade. It’s also Tempest’s first publication since changing their name from Kate, and using they/them pronouns.
Continue reading “Review: On Connection, Kae Tempest”Why do women write under men’s names?
Published in BBC Culture September 14, 2020
What’s in a pen name? A whole heap of patriarchal oppression, if we’re to believe a recent publishing endeavour.
Continue reading “Why do women write under men’s names?”Review: More Than a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Published in The Observer September 7, 2020
It’s hard to overstate just how influential Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman was when published in 2011 – and how far we’ve come since. Nine years on and the feminism she had to advocate for has become thoroughly, totally mainstream, while perky books by clever journalists about every conceivable aspect of being a woman have proliferated in the ground Moran tilled.
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