Finishing M.J. Hyland’s second novel, Carry Me Down, left me in a curious state. On the one hand I had that satisfied feeling one gets reaching a final full stop, like smacking one’s lips together at the finish of a particularly good meal. On the other, though, my eyebrows knitted together with questions regarding this […]
I have met , on different occasions, Dacia Maraini and, each time, I’ve been struck by her incredible ability to tell a story. She’s a genuine storyteller who involves and transmits emotions, exactly like it happens when you read her books, each unforgettable, from the first La Vacanza [translated as The Holiday – a novel] […]
“To create a democracy, blood must sometimes be spilled”. These would be wise words were it not for the fact that they were pronounced by Augusto Pinochet, one of the greatest mass-murderers of the 20th century. Pinochet’s seizure of power on September 11th 1973, an earlier 9/11 which produced a similarly catastrophic scene – that […]
There was an advertisement for a mobile phone company before this film in the London cinema where I saw it. It presented a sequence of life-changing moments. A father stares from the screen and falteringly embarks upon a momentous confession, to a child ‘old enough to know now’. Or an actress, fixing the camera with […]
Trying to contact Tim Winton appears to be no easy matter. A couple of false starts, and a period of waiting is required before Three Monkeys finally manages to get in touch with the Australian author. The surprise then is how engaged Winton is once contact has been made. His remoteness a physical reality rather […]
“Ain’t No One Soul In the Whole World Knows My Name But It’sWritten Up In the Sky And I’ll See It By and By”. [GillianWelch. No One Knows My Name]. Visualise a world without Gillian Welch. What kind of picture does it paint? A surreal, self conceived universe that exists in the corner of every […]
“It’s all based on this fuckin’ crap idea that everything turned amazing in ’76 when a bunch of cunts who couldn’t play started twatting around in New York. That means nothing to me. I don’t care”, Christian Madden of Anglo-American band The Earlies declares, in what could well be a musical manifesto. “I’m not worried […]
Censorship is not limited to totalitarian States. It can be a subtle thing, when disconcerting ideas are not banned, but, through various means, marginalised. Dr. Mary Condren’s groundbreaking work The Serpent and the Goddess, a study on women, religion and power in Celtic Ireland, was never placed on an index of banned books, and yet […]
Over the course of three novels and eight non-fiction books, addressing subjects as diverse as jazz, D.H. Lawrence, World War One and John Berger, Geoff Dyer has quietly become one of the most interesting and admired writers of his generation. His work has become particularly known for the distinctive approach he takes to the thin […]
It’s the dead end of the year, the last days of October when the summer feels like a distant memory. It’s the sort of dull, neutral day that neither entices you outside, nor menaces you to stay inside. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are inside a cold, damp, cavernous club booming through their soundcheck. Rifles, one […]
