In 1909, in a late letter to his brother, Henry James bemoaned the fact that the ‘novel of ideas’ – the novel ‘built on the momentum and inspiration found in a solid, sustainable and infinitely expandable idea’ – was finally dead, and that it had died from ‘lack of want or appetite in the reading
In this exploration of her pain, terror, and ten years of barely surviving the trauma of rape and near-murder, Susan Brison’s most piercing words are, ‘For months after my assault, I had to stop myself before saying (what seemed accurate at the time),
In the summer, I met a man who made his living by selling computer hardware he found discarded around London’s business districts. A Scorpion tank driver during the Gulf war, he told me how he had been wounded in a firefight and now found himself unequipped for ordinary employment. Soldiers who have seen action are
Michael Kr
VOLUME I: THE MODERN MOVEMENT VOLUME TWO: THE TWO NATURESwith a foreword by William Boyd As a formula for failure, the first line of Cyril Connolly’s once famous ‘word cycle’, The Unquiet Grave, is unsurpassable: The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a
Annie Proulx’s latest work is a strange hybrid. It is more a series of short stories than a novel; and though it is immensely readable, fusing sentiment and bleakness with Proulx’s customary wit and irresistible relish for the quirky, some may find the whole ensemble less than a fully fledged work of fiction. The Shipping
