Making It, Faking It
A century has now elapsed since F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was published. Its author had had high hopes for it, especially after the embarrassing failure of his play The Vegetable. Not only did he want this new book to be a commercial success, he also hoped it would lead to his being taken […]
Aschenbach’s Last Journey
In May 1911, a few months before Gustav von Aschenbach first became a figment of his pen, Thomas Mann was staying with his wife and brother Heinrich on the wooded island of Brioni on the Istrian peninsula, holiday haunt of the Habsburg monarchy. Moving the holiday across to the other side of the Adriatic was […]
Twice Blest
Mercy, by Joan Silber, Counterpoint, 256 pp, $27, ISBN: 978-1640097070 There are some writers whose stories make you feel as if you are gently rafting down a river, watching the scenery drift by. Penelope Fitzgerald. William Maxwell. Tessa Hadley. The journey is seemingly effortless, the landscape deceptively typical. Until you pay careful attention. Until you […]
Blame it on the Boogeyman
Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold on Us, by Anna Bogutskaya, Faber & Faber, 244 pp American Scary: A History of Horror from Salem to Stephen King and Beyond, by Jeremy Dauber, Algonquin Books, 468 pp The ghost of Jamie Bulger haunted the margins of my childhood, and it returned to haunt my […]
The Political Pen
Orwell – the new life, by DJ Taylor, Constable, 960 pp, £14.99, ISBN: 978-1472132987 Who is Big Brother? A Reader’s Guide to George Orwell, by DJ Taylor, Yale University Press, 224 pp, £18.99, ISBN: 978-0300272987 ‘To read him and write about him is one of the greatest satisfactions I know,’ writes DJ Taylor of George […]
This Is Not About Me
Le tiers temps, by Maylis Besserie, Gallimard, 184 pp, €18, ISBN: 978-2072878398 On May 11th, the week that bookshops opened in France after the first lockdown, there was an item on the evening radio news: the Goncourt prize for a first novel was awarded to Le tiers temps, a story about Samuel Beckett’s last months in […]