Reading through numerous reviews of Christos Tsiolkas’s novel The Slap helped me clarify why it’s such a particularly strong novel; not because they’re uniformly positive, but because almost all that I’ve read take a strong line on the book – I’ve yet to come across a review that didn’t engage wholeheartedly with the novel, which […]
Should the laws of physics apply to a novel? There are readers who, not without reason, demand that yes, the laws of gravity, and thermodynamics must apply at all times if the work is to be taken seriously. For example, if a character is to cross a room, they should do so – with or […]
Novelist and short-story writer Michel Faber, in his three monkeys interview, commented “I think it’s juvenile and arrogant when literary writers compulsively remind their readers that the characters aren’t real. People know that already. The challenge is to make an intelligent reader suspend disbelief, to seduce them into the reality of a narrative.” This is […]
At the start of Haruki Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, the narrator is rung-up by a mysterious female voice who demands, like a survey-taker, ten minutes of his time: “Ten minutes, please,” said a woman on the other end. I’m good at recognizing people’s voices, but this was not one I knew. “Excuse me? […]
I can sympathise, to an extent, with DoveGreyReader who approached Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland with trepidation given the tag ‘post 9-11 masterpiece’ (the Observer) that has been widely used by enthusiastic reviewers. It’s a problematic tag for any novel, but particularly so in this case given that the novel scarcely concerns itself with the attacks or their aftermath. That’s […]
IFC.com publishes a list of titles of recent books that, according to list compiler Maud Newton, would make great movies. Amongst the interesting choices* is The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas – a book which I feel inclined to agree would make a good film, but not, perhaps, for the same reasons. Newton correctly laments what […]
Having just finished Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, it was a pleasure to stumble upon an interview with the author (on his site, via Powells.com) where he discussed the process that led him to choose the narrative voice of the novel. I had tried variations of minimalism in the third person, with voices ranging fable […]
The word that keeps coming up, in conversation with Johnny Bramwell, lead singer and songwriter with Mancunians I am Kloot, is drama. Whether it be references to Harold Pinter, or the description of their latest album as “like Richard III as a character”, it’s clear that he, and indeed the band, have specific goals in […]
