The author of The Girl on the Train on discovering Alison Bechdel, identifying with Physical, and her favourite new crime novelBorn in Zimbabwe in 1972, author Paula Hawkins studied PPE at Oxford University before joining the Times as a business journa…
Alan Johnson: ‘John Betjeman was wrong about Slough’
The former health secretary and acclaimed memoirist on his rock’n’roll past, how the Litvinenko poisoning inspired his new thriller, and how he’d have handled CovidAlan Johnson grew up in working-class Notting Hill, London, in the 1950s, raised by his …
“Something Disturbing To Raise Your Spirits”
Leftovers by JD Hancock (cc by)GenjiandProust’s Increasingly Strange Stories for an Increasingly Strange Year is another faboo roundup of weird audio dramas, again with tons of info and links to each one … And for yet more weird and wonderful, PussKi…
The new award from the Women’s prize should scrap its age limit
Literary prize culture favours young and marketable writers – and the new Futures scheme is simply adding to the problemLast week, the Women’s prize announced a new award in partnership with Good Housekeeping magazine. “Futures” will provide promotiona…
The Women of Troy by Pat Barker review – bleak and impressive
In the sequel to her Iliad retelling The Silence of the Girls, told from the perspective of captured queen Briseis, Barker moves on from war to its aftermathTroy has fallen. Its warriors, even its unborn male babies, are all dead. The mutilated body of…
Top 10 books about family life | Stephen Walsh
From parents who meddle in their children’s relationships to ex-wives who loom over second marriages, families in fiction can be just as complicated as they are in real lifeUncomplicated, happy families are not to be found in most books – no more than …
On my radar: Shaun Keaveny’s cultural highlights
The 6 Music presenter on Schitt’s Creek, Douglas Stuart’s extraordinary Shuggie Bain and the canal-side pub he longs to visitBorn in Leigh, Greater Manchester, in 1972, radio DJ and presenter Shaun Keaveny began his career at XFM and in 2007 joined 6 M…
Frank Herbert heard “shows within shows” and got excited
Do you like fake movies and shows that only exist within the fiction of real movies and shows? Then you will enjoy Nestflix, a catalogue of metafictional entertainment from Lynn Fisher.
Martin Amis: ‘Style isn’t something you apply later’
The novelist on making Philip Larkin his fictional father, why writing has become a battle, and his new work about race in the USMartin Amis, 71, is the author of 15 novels, two story collections and seven works of nonfiction, including a memoir, Exper…
Emotion is not the antithesis of logic
Becky Chambers and Martha Wells discuss A Psalm for the Wild-Built and Fugitive Telemetry (slyt)