Hatchet Jobs of the Month

David Sexton on The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy (Evening Standard)

‘It all feels very GCSE … there’s too much verbal prancing, too little that’s original being said, particularly when the poems are not personal. You end the book thinking that if this is poetry, it’s a trivial art. But it is not.’

David Annand on Damned by Chuck Palahniuk (Literary Review)

‘Part Judy Blume homage, part Wiki-guide to theological anthropology, part metafictional meditation on the autonomy of imagined characters, part Breakfast Club pastiche, part juvenile fantasy romp and part Brangelina character assassination: it manages, beyond all reasonable expectations, to be worse than this makes it sound.’

Nicholas Tucker on The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Independent)

‘… however lavish the exotic icing on this literary cake, nothing can ultimately disguise the underlying doughy reality of a repetitive story, flatly narrated … [This] is reminiscent not so much of The Tempest as of a mild but persistent attack of trapped wind.