When did tidying become a thing? Marie Kondo’s current series on Netflix is strange but compelling; a radiantly happy-seeming elf trots into people’s messy homes and transforms them. Or rather, after she’s skipped about a bit talking about sparking joy, she leaves them to it, and it’s a hell of a lot of work. Just […]
Continue reading →Over years of being a literary journalist, books have come into my hands that I haven’t got round to reading. In many cases I never will; but every so often I pick something up to while away a few hours. First in an occasional series is Nicholas Griffin’s ‘The House of Sight and Shadow’, published […]
Continue reading →It’s taken me at least a year to re-read ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’. Of course I’ve read a lot of other things in the meantime, but Ann Radcliffe’s 1794 gothic whopper is an easy book to put down, and I don’t mean that as an insult. It was hugely popular and influential in its day, […]
Continue reading →My chat with Joanne Harris (Oxford Lit Fest, last entry) prompted me to dig out an early of hers that I’d never read – ‘Sleep, Pale Sister’ (Transworld), a slice of Victorian gothic that preceded ‘Chocolat’, the novel that made her famous. ‘SPS’ takes for its background the world of the Pre-Raphaelites, and more generally […]
Continue reading →I made four visits this week to the Oxford Lit Fest, chairing four remarkable authors. This meant a lot of rushing up and down from Paddington, memorising the route: Slough (where I always think ‘Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough / It isn’t fit for humans now’ – gosh, the power of a great […]
Continue reading →I have a particular fondness for yoga transformation stories so a quick look at Emma Slade’s Set Free: A life-changing journey from banking to Buddhism in Bhutan (Summersdale £9.99) immediately appealed. Slade worked in banking as an analyst, living in Hong Kong, flying around the Far East attending high-powered meetings and offering her expertise. (I […]
Continue reading →In the past for my annual evening of Valentine-inspired readings, I’ve featured Anti-Valentines (enjoyably bilious) and Legendary Lovers (Abelard and Heloise, Ovid, Elizabeth and Leicester). But if I was pushed to explain the theme this year, perhaps I’d have to call it ‘It’s complicated…’ All the speakers showcased work expressing the pains, paradoxes, problems and precarious joys […]
Continue reading →I spent the weekend at an arts festival in an extraordinary venue – the imposing Tilbury Cruise Terminal on the north bank of the Thames, where the Windrush docked in 1948. Shorelines, the two-day offshoot of Estuary 2016, which runs to 2 October, also had one of the most fun approaches to any festival, with […]
Continue reading →Emma Cline’s debut The Girls has created a stir this year, having gained a huge advance, a film option and high-level praise. The reviews, while appreciative, were somewhat muted and having read the book (no, devoured it) I can understand why. ‘She’s a better writer than Donna Tartt,’ a publishing friend said, adding that the […]
Continue reading →I love occult-themed novels and novels set in Venice, so it’s amazing I’ve had Amanda Prantera’s The Cabalist (Bloomsbury) kicking about for so long. Prantera is due a renaissance – it happened to the wonderful Deborah Levy so why not her? Prantera’s writing has a flavour all its own: intellectual, playful and distinctively creepy with its investigations […]
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