I remember when Normal People came out in 2018. There were hundreds of copies stacked from floor to ceiling in Waterstones (it’s vastly popular and a multiple award-winner) but, for some reason, I avoided making the purchase. However, when the recent BBC series came out and I watched the first episode, I couldn’t help but […]Read More
The best way to learn someone’s secret is to have them write a story. “So it really happened?” one reviewer demanded. “The professor made her do. . .that in exchange for raising her boyfriend’s grade?” The author—still under a mandate of silence—shrugged. “Is it based on your life?” someone else slyly asked. Nostrils flared, eyes […]Read More
Serving as a timely update to Chomsky and Herman’s Manufacturing Consent, Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi’s book Hate Inc. lays out how corporations subsumed the media. Read More
During these dubious and unprecedented days many of us will be spending isolated, I often find that the antidote for my anxiety comes in the form of an engrossing and powerful novel. As these next few weeks will undoubtedly be unsettling, here is a compilation of novels which offer a mental escape from these harrowing and fraught times. Read More
By the end of the first page, we are immediately immersed into the unconventional mind of Janina, dismissed by everyone around her as merely a mad old woman, yet endlessly insightful and imperfectly attuned to the world around her. This comic tale of death and vengeance is richly philosophical and oddly humorous, written in witty, melancholic prose, it is an ode to anyone whose sanity is questioned purely because they refuse to conform to society’s ‘norm’. Read More
Florida (2018) Lauren Groff’s second collection of short stories, Florida, plunges us into a hot and humid world, where swamp creatures slither over the thresholds of human existence, and tensions drip from rain-soaked leaves. It stages a multi-faceted exploration of a domesticity fraying at its edges, eroded by a pervasive sense of societal, political and […]Read More
“In the windowless back offices of a designer furniture showroom, women stand in a circle, stuffed into ill-fitting black jeans, grey jeans, olive jeans […] One of them is explaining something from her real, nonwork life, something about returning something she bought online – the frustration and indignity of the experience”. So begins Halle Butler’s […]Read More
Usually when I submit an article for review, it is indeed that, a review. But when I picked up Scarlett Curtis’ It’s Not Ok To Feel Blue – and Other Lies I realised that in no way, could I even think about reviewing such a book as this. I’m writing this, simply, because it’s something […]Read More
Being a teenager is difficult. For most of us reading this, we’ve been there, done that and got umpteen t-shirts to show for it. Add in newly divorced parents, a brother you never see, mounting schoolwork, and a UCAS application, all while dealing with a break-up from the boy you thought you’d marry, it’s easy […]Read More
Since its inception seven years ago, A24 has taken great strides in transforming itself from a fledgling production company into a powerhouse of independent cinema, with no less than 25 Academy Awards under their belt. With films such as Lady Bird, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and this year’s cult summer hit, Midsommar, it […]Read More
The past is funny place. For some of us, it’s good. For some of us, it’s bad. For some, it sits in the middle, simply bordering on whether it needs to be spoken about or not. For Florence Claybourne, the past is an almighty landscape of confusion, betrayal and bewilderment, offset by a man called […]Read More
I really tried to avoid the never ending stream of tweets on my timeline obsessing about Conversations With Friends. I already fell victim to the online chatter about the profundity of Anna Burns’ 2018 Man Booker Prize winning novel, Milkman. The prose was so dense it was like trying to read treacle, and I gave […]Read More
It has been just under ten years since American author, Suzanne Collins, finished her world-renowned book series: The Hunger Games. Now, she is back for more and teases fans with this poster, revealed this week by Scholastic Book Clubs. The unnamed prequel is set to be written sixty-four years before the start of her best-selling trilogy, […]Read More
There is a small, vocal, and very protective fandom in the literary world who were both wary and excited when they found out that Donna Tartt’s third novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Goldfinch, was being made into a film. The pint-sized writer penned the 800-page long story of art theft, grief and belonging in 2013, […]Read More
On Monday, we fans of the A Game of Thrones book series were treated to a rarity: George R. R. Martin wrote a blog post (http://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2019/05/20/an-ending/) on the final, upcoming books, whilst waving goodbye to the popular television series. He wrote: “Winter is coming, I told you, long ago… and so it is. THE WINDS […]Read More
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