Alexandra Erin (previously) posts short speculative fiction stories on her Patreon, including a one-sided conversation about dead people posting status updates on Facebook, a fairy tale about a healer’s price, a political horror story about scars that …
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead review – a delicious heist novel
The double Pulitzer winner turns to crime with a tale of 1960s New York gangsters, rendered with superbly observed, affectionate, page-turning brioFor more than 20 years Colson Whitehead has delivered novels notable for cultural satire, racial allegory…
Top 10 novels of the 1930s | Alec Marsh
From George Orwell to Daphne du Maurier, the books that made a decade span village detectives, Edwardian butlers and Bright Young ThingsBeing asked to curate a list of the best 10 novels of the 1930s is rather like being invited to tap-dance on a croco…
Snow Country by Sebastian Faulks review – the collective trauma of a continent
The second novel in the author’s Austrian trilogy is a melancholic tale of lost love and reflection set between the warsSebastian Faulks’s 2005 novel, Human Traces, made explicit his ongoing fascination with the mystery of human consciousness and the f…
A Calling for Charlie Barnes by Joshua Ferris review – the man and the myth
A dreamer’s storytelling son reworks his father’s life in Ferris’s daring and very funny latestAny novelist is fiercely impelled to give their story a shape, to mould a satisfying journey along which ends are tied and consequences paid out. And yet par…
Three and/or Sixty-One Literary Bears
Patricia Lockwood (LRB, 08/12/2021), “Pull Off My Head”: “Is Bear one of those 1970s books about growing out your armpit hair? Kind of, but not only. Is it a metaphor for our relationship to nature? Fuck off.” Marlena Williams (LitHub, 10/23/2020), “Sy…
On my radar: Roy Williams’s cultural highlights
The renowned playwright on David Morrissey’s acting podcast, the joy of Marvel movies and the musician he listens to every dayRoy Williams was born in London in 1968 and raised in Notting Hill. He studied writing at Rose Bruford college and his plays i…
Newly discovered Tennessee Williams story published for the first time
The 1952 work by the Streetcar Named Desire playwright was found in Yale University’s archivesAs soon as he crossed the border into Italy, Tennessee Williams found his health was “magically restored”. “There was the sun and there were the smiling Itali…
“People like him love standard procedure”
Two short scifi/fantasy stories in which customer service folks get to reward customers who treat them well, or punish those who treat them badly. Dyce writes about an isolated refueling station: “Out-of-hours fuelling requires a prior appointment.” Ai…
Lauren Groff: ‘I often get very lonely because my job is very lonely’
The author of Fates and Furies on being endorsed by Barack Obama, the climate crisis and discovering medieval humour for a new novel about 12th-century poet Marie de FranceLauren Groff, 43, grew up in Cooperstown, New York, a place she fictionalised as…