It's been quite the month. I turned 31 at the weekend, quietly decrying the fact that I'm now officially 'in my 30s'. Birthdays as a continuously nomadic expat are always something of a double-edged sword. My non-stop wandering over the past decade has left behind me a wake of confusion, with family and friends generally … Continue reading The Monthly Reader: September 2019
"So they went into the basement, a long, white-washed room running the whole length of the house. A window at one end gave onto a coal hole; a little daylight filtered through at an angle from an iron grating in the pavement above. There was a clean, sweet smell of new wood and a tang … Continue reading Review: The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
I track the history of my life less along the lines of conventional milestones - fleeting first crushes and those terrifying but gratifying signs of impending puberty - and more in my memories of favourite books. My fascination with the fantastical magnificence of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory marked one of my earliest forays into 'proper' books … Continue reading Monday Musing: For The Adults Who Read Children’s Fiction…
"Even in death the boys were trouble. The secret graveyard lay on the north side of the Nickel campus, in a patchy acre of wild grass between the old work barn and the school dump...The developers of the office park had earmarked the field for a lunch plaza, with four water features and a concrete … Continue reading Review: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
"When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that great age would calm my fever and now that … Continue reading Review: Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck
I am no stranger to homesickness. I've spent close to half my life moving town and country with a regularity that's truly baffling when you consider how little I enjoy change. Until I turned 16, I had always lived in the same town - Basingstoke: the butt of many jokes about England's quietly unattractive (and … Continue reading Bibliotherapy For Homesickness: Fiction Recommendations For Tough Times
"Just as the painter Rubens amused himself with being the ambassador to the court of St. James's - a sufficient career in itself for most busy men - so Mrs. Lucas amused herself, in the intervals of her pursuit of art for art's sake, with being not only an ambassador but a monarch. Riseholme might … Continue reading Review: Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson
"These were the hidden violences. Day-long deaths that snuffed out our small and limited futures. Since we grew up around London towers, struggle was a standard echo in our speech, in thought, in action. But it was only after the release of that one video, clipped from a phone of a witness, that everyone else … Continue reading Review: In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne
Another month has flown by and it seems that we're heading unrelentingly into summer. Summer in the US midwest is actually the setting for some incredibly productive reading time. If possible, I become even more reclusive than in the winter, as part of a desperate attempt to avoid the heat. Not only am I completely … Continue reading The Monthly Reader: May 2019
It has been an excellent couple of years for dystopian fiction. The closer we feel to the brink of humanistic and political catastrophe, the more we turn to fictional dystopias, as though to torment ourselves with the preponderance of warnings to stay alert to the erosion - however gradual - of the freedoms that we … Continue reading Monday Musing: Why We Love Dystopian Fiction In A World Of ‘Alternative Facts’
