It's not all "Reader, I married him" but plenty of contemporary novels are preoccupied by the idea of storytelling, and often one voice does speak to us directly even now. Periscope Books, 2016 In Tabish Khair's Just Another Jihadi Jane, the storyteller's direct address appears regularly and spiritedly.
This month, I'm wholly enjoying the stories in the Short Story Advent Calendar (edited by Michael Hingston and designed by Natalie Olsen). The variety of the boxed set is fantastic, especially if you're looking for "new" short story writers to follow, but I generally read collections of works by a single
In the wake of my IFOA reading list and the literary prizelists of the season, my November reading felt relatively whimsical. Without duedates attached to the majority of my reading, it was a pleasure to slip into volumes which had sat untouched in recent weeks. Each of these three volumes covers,
Even when Bernice is liked, she's not necessarily liked for the person she is, but for the person someone believes her to be. This is largely why she leaves herself, why she learns to fly. "I wonder how fascinated she’d be if she knew that I’d been fucked before I
This volume is a fantastic introduction to Chef Michael Smith's oeuvre. The volume opens with "The Real Food Pledge", and although this is the first of his books I've read, I could speak this pledge right along with him: it's as though he's speaking directly from our kitchen. So you
