When I think about novellas I’ve enjoyed this year, I recall Poulomi Sanyal’s Colour Me Confounded (2017) and Kerry Trautman’s Irregulars (2023), their settings soaked with the ambiance of their main characters’ workplaces, whether a boardroom or a diner. And I think about Helen deWitt’s The English Understand Wool
In the first week of Covid-19 lockdown, I pulled The Box Garden off the shelf, opened it to read: “That there are no certainties in life. That we change hourly or even from one minute to the next, our entire cycle of being altered, our whole selves shaken with
I’ve muddled Frenchman’s Creek (1941) and Jamaica Inn for years. That’s why I started watching the 2014 mini-series of Jamaica Inn because I thought I’d read the book already; but, I hadn’t, so I stopped watching after the first episode. Now, at last, a great reason to sort out
Yesterday, I chatted about one of my favourites from this year’s Giller Prize longlist. Tomorrow, I’ll be chatting about the most talked-about from this year’s longlist, Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, as part of #MARM Margaret Atwood Reading Month. So, today, the other books on the longlist, the ones I
In Iris Murdoch’s Henry and Cato (1976), Henry Marshalson inherits the family estate when his brother Sandy dies. Henry returns to the home where his mother Gerda still lives, with her kinda-sycophantic admirer, Lucius. Cato lives nearby. So does Colette. Stephanie does not, but, because of her pre-existing
