It was, as is so often the case, the cover that caught my eye. I was in Unity Books, browsing the stacks for a bit of contemporary something or other. Something a little bit femme fatale suited my mood. View this post on Instagram A post shared by @prosateuse on Sep […]
Zone One isn’t so much sci-fi as apoca-lit. Whitehead uses the zombie apocalypse to examine humanity, what we do when we’re pushed to the brink, and the capacity for the government to regain control, assert their systems, and categorise everything. So we have paperwork, and corporate sponsors. We have Post Apocalypse Stress Disorder – PASD […]
Bird by Bird is a book about writing, for writers. You will know if this is you. Anne Lamott isn’t telling you much you haven’t heard before. You’ve read it all in writer interviews and blog posts and pep talks, in irritating articles that tell you not to use adverbs, in other writing books you’ve […]
Decay is a favourite artistic theme of mine. The melancholy of nostalgia is another. A Visit from the Goon Squad, roaming back and forth across time, has both in spades. The question has been raised whether it is a novel or a set of short stories; I’d come down on the side of “novel”, personally. […]
We lost Richard Adams in the last week of 2016, so it seemed appropriate to talk about how one of his books, Watership Down, was a touchstone throughout my childhood. The opening scene is one of those “classic English countryside” images, something timeless. “The primroses were over.” I don’t know why that first line has […]
All I’ve written this week is a sort of incoherent stream-of-consciousness, influenced by the new Nick Cave album Skeleton Tree and Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley’s new EP. Also influenced by Maus, although I couldn’t tell you how. I’ve started reading Pale Fire, which is the sort of work of genius that just makes you […]
I have Difficulty with Jane Austen. I found Pride and Prejudice a moreish read; I attribute this characteristic to its sexual tension. Romantic tension… ? No; throw Mr Darcy in with modern readers, and sexual tension it is. It was not “good” and yet it was a satisfying read. The prose was pleasant, yet the […]
I was unsure whether I wanted to write about Nineteen Eighty-Four. I don’t feel like I’m really “qualified” for it. It’s one of those books that tends to be studied, and I read it… Well, I was going to say “for pleasure”, but really I chose to read it because it is a Modern Classic […]
Junky takes a while to get into. No, that’s not right… It’s more that it takes a while to orient oneself within it. At any rate, once you have your bearings, it is magnificent. There’s a strange claustrophobia to the prose. The reader lives mostly in Lee’s head, locked away with his thoughts. Lee is […]
The problem with bookshops is you always want to buy something when you go in. I wish I had more money, and could buy locally more often. There’s an independent bookshop near my university, a sweet little place called Unity Books that’s always filled with people. Well, it feels that way; it’s small enough that not […]