Mark Valentine After a sly introduction in which the narrator purportedly gets a transcript of an ancient manuscript from the hand of a descendant of the character who was Greenmantle in John Buchan’s novel, this unusual and distinctive work next presents a translation of that document. This is said to be from the medieval Latin […]
Peter Vansittart – Hermes In Paris
Mark Valentine Peter Vansittart writes some of the most original, supple, coruscatingly erudite fiction available, usually drawing upon arcane historical eras to enact his unillusioned meditations upon fate and chance. Hermes in Paris, a new novel in his eightieth year, depicts the Hellenic god of magic, messages, thieves and trickery as a jaded dandy in […]
Kenji Jasper – Dark
Chris Wiegand There is a fantastic scene in Martin Scorsese’s 1973 masterpiece Mean Streets. In a film packed with memorable moments, one sums up the dilemma faced by the central character perfectly. The scene is brief: Charlie and his girlfriend Teresa ‘escape’ the city (at her request) to take time out and spend the afternoon […]
Thomas Bernhard: The Making Of An Austrian and The Novels of Thomas Bernhard
Stephen Mitchelmore finds Thomas Bernhard to be elusive within two studies of the Austrian writer What if everything we can be depends on playing a role? Where would that leave us? Well, first of all, it would mean that the public self, the one presented to the world, is not “a mask” but the original; […]
Will Self : Feeding Frenzy : Biting The Hand That Feeds
Chris Hall serves up a slice of Will Self with the publication of his second collection of journalism, Feeding Frenzy Chris Hall: First off, congratulations on the birth of your new son, Luther. Will Self: Yeah, little baby Luther. He was born on August 8, so he’s a couple of months old now. CH: So […]
Bernard MacLaverty – The Anatomy School
Dorothy Johnston Bernard MacLaverty’s The Anatomy School is in many ways a familiar rite of passage story of a schoolboy growing up in Northern Ireland in the Sixties. The central character, Martin, attends a Catholic grammar school to which he’s won a scholarship but has failed his exams and must repeat his final year. Since […]
W.G. Sebald: Austerlitz
Stephen Mitchelmore (Editor’s note: this review was written a couple of weeks prior to W.G. Sebald’s untimely death in a car crash on 14th December 2001). In its official press release, the committee for the Nobel Prize for Literature praised VS Naipaul, the 2001 recipient, for "works that compel us to see the presence of […]
Paul Wilson: Someone To Watch Over Me
Budge Burgess There is an implied truism that bereavement is something which happens suddenly, usually unexpectedly, leaving the bereaved to discover appropriate coping mechanisms and survival skills. But, as Paul Wilson demonstrates in Someone to Watch Over Me, bereavement can be insidious, slowly defrauding the individual of opportunity and potential. Wilson employs the massacre of […]
J.G. Ballard : Rushing To Paradise : Not A Literary Man
Marcus Moure’s 1995 interview with J.G. Ballard about his novel Rushing To Paradise Ballard is one of the best writers of speculative fiction alive today. Whether exploring the innate sexuality of automobile accidents, the power of dreams as reality, or navigating through the rubble of modern civilization, his often savage, apocalyptic work has influenced artists […]
J.G. Ballard: Rushing To Paradise
Marcos Moure J.G. Ballard’s latest psychodrama is an intensely raw, tense, and bloodied tale of extremes set in the mythical “paradise” of Saint-Esprit, a desolate atoll somewhere in the South Pacific. The novel is thinly veiled as an adventure story as seen through the eyes of its narrator, 16-year old Neil Dempsey. This is no […]
David Markson: This Is Not A Novel
Stephen Mitchelmore There’s always someone telling us that the novel is dead. And that is how it should be. As well as offering us the chance to laugh at the fools who parrot this announcement, it makes us ask, for the umpteenth time: what is the novel for, exactly? The question should not be answered […]
Richard Holland: Nero: The Man Behind The Myth
Budge Burgess Interest in Roman history is an ironic perennial, blossoming with each Hollywood blockbuster – Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, Gladiator. Romans appreciated the mass appeal of the spectacle, now available on celluloid with reassurance that no animal was harmed in its making. Nevertheless, few could name a single Roman – Pontius Pilate was, Spartacus […]
Nick Hornby : How To Be Good : Gender Trouble
Patrick McGuigan talks with Nick Hornby about the changing roles of men and women in his new novel How To Be Good Men stumble through life bewildered by relationships, terrified of responsibility and unable to articulate their feelings; or so you would think from the characters portrayed in Nick Hornby’s novels. Women are only used […]
Gilles Deleuze: Proust And Signs
Stephen Mitchelmore This isn’t a new book. The French original was published in 1964 and in English eight years later. But don’t dismiss it as out-of-date. Like the book it analyses, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, it pitches the reader into the future with a rare vigour. Buy this re-issue and give your […]
Tania Glyde: Junk DNA
James Marsland Any work of dark prophecy reminds you of the inescapable shadow cast by George Orwell and 1984. That the TV phenomenon of last year should have been called Big Brother reminds you how much its ideas have entered the cultural lexicon. Others like "Room 101" and "doublespeak" have also lingered on long since […]
Peter Ackroyd – London: The Biography
Chris Hall Those who have read Peter Ackroyd’s Dan Leno and The Limehouse Golem will recall that the word golem comes from the medieval Jewish for an artificial human being brought to life by supernatural means, a “thing without form”. Ackroyd’s latest book, London: The Biography, has itself managed to breathe life into a seemingly […]
George Pelecanos: Washington DC Crime Quartet
Chris Wiegand on George Pelecanos’ contemporary hardboiled Washington DC novels With his critically acclaimed Washington DC Quartet, comprising The Big Blowdown, King Suckerman, The Sweet Forever and Shame the Devil, George P. Pelecanos has done for the mean streets of the Chocolate City what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles and Chester Himes did for […]
Hunter S. Thompson : Fear and Loathing In America and Screwjack : Postcards From The Edge
Nathan Cain reflects on the journalistic legacy of elderly dope fiend Hunter S. Thompson I found Hunter S. Thompson by accident. I was looking through the stacks at my local public library, searching for something, I don’t remember what, when I read the title Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on the spine of an […]
Ernesto Quinonez : Bodega Dreams : Spanglish Stories
Chris Wiegand meets Ernesto Quiñonez and dives into Spanish Harlem with Bodega Dreams With the short story collection Drown, Junot Diaz proved that modern literary representations of the Latin American experience could be both critically and commercially successful and Ernesto Quiñonez’s assured debut novel Bodega Dreams follows suite. Published in the U.K. by Serpent’s Tail, […]
Jean-Yves Tadie: Marcel Proust
Stephen Mitchelmore For a short time, I used to stay up most of the night. In the long summer months between school years there was no all-night radio let alone all-night television. To pass time, I would listen to the BBC World Service on poor Medium Wave reception. One night around two in the morning, […]
Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay
Miriam McDonald This book, set mostly in the 1940s, begins when Joe Kavalier escapes with the legendary Golem from Nazi-occupied Prague, only to find himself in America with no way to free his family, no matter what he does. Just as America is wide-open for these characters, so Europe closes around their loved ones and […]
J.G. Ballard : Super Cannes : Flight And Imagination
Chris Hall talks about the dark side of capitalism and the deceptions of reality with J.G. Ballard Walking along Oxford Street the day after I finished reading JG Ballard’s new novel, Super-Cannes, it struck me, literally, the total acceptance of the substrate of violence in consumer societies when it manifests itself. A silent, monolithic crowd […]
Andrew Vachss: Dead And Gone
Miriam McDonald Every review I’ve seen of one of Andrew Vachss’ novels talks a lot about the man first. It’s similar to the way James Ellroy is treated in reviews, as though the man is more important than the literature. Certainly both have seen and been involved of things most people only see touched on […]
Anne Rice: Merrick
Miriam McDonald Anne Rice is one of the most important writers of vampire fiction. The impact her novel Interview with the Vampire had is indisputable. If the vampire of the ninetheenth century was the outsider threatening society and the vampire of much of the twentieth century the enemy within our own society (or a by-product […]
Irvine Welsh and the UK Drug Debate
Chris Mitchell ponders the impact of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting on the UK drug debate [Spike note – this article was written in December 1997 for the now defunct Canadian online magazine Can Say. With the recent furore in the UK after seven Conservative Shadow Cabinet ministers admitted smoking pot, it seemed worth republishing. Despite there […]
