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Judge a cover by its book
The conservative tastes of over-mighty retailers have resulted in generic jackets that say nothing about their contentsMy first experience of Dan Rhodes's fiction was a tatty collection of A4 pages...
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Authors, like Oscar winners, should keep their acknowledgements short |...
Why do writers whose prose is clean and clear turn into gushing Kate Winslets in the thank-you pages of their books?The title story of If I Loved You, I would Tell You This, Robin Black's debut...
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Reasons to be cheerful about literature in translation
And Other Stories is an imaginative new publishing initiative using reading groups to choose what it will publishOptimism is a rare bird in the literary habitat; an endangered species. So when Colm...
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Wallander: the secret of casting crime fiction for TV
Rolf Lassgard's portrayal of Wallander – airing on BBC4 this Christmas – brings yet another dimension to Henning Mankell's rumpled detectiveIn one of those music and video exchange places, I recently...
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As well as World Book Night, let's have a Local Bookshop Year
Whether or not you support this week's grand giveaway, you should be backing your local indie, tooIn the space of a few days, two news stories – one pumped out through the usual literary sources (Book...
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Box Set Club: Our Friends in the North
In the first of a series rewatching and reconsidering our favourite boxsets, we revisit the epic drama charting the demise of old LabourRevisiting anything 15 years after you fell in love with it,...
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Brooklyn book festival's independent example
With its spotlight on small publishers and booksellers, could the success of this New York event be reproduced in the UK?St Ann and the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn seats a comfortable 900...
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The Costa short story prize is not enough
We are overdue a high-profile award for this neglected form, but we need more than a token, niche gong for a single storyThe news that the Costa prize is to give an award to the short story came...
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Stuart Evers' top 10 homes in literature
From Miss Havisham's decaying domicile to Jekyll and Hyde's shared space, fictional homes are as varied as their inhabitantsIdeas of home are nebulous, ranging from "where the heart is", to the...
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A Man in Love by Karl Ove Knausgaard – review
The second part in Karl Ove Knausgaard's novel sequence My Struggle is as invented and real as life itselfSince the original Norwegian publication of the first volume of his My Struggle sequence of...
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Wreaking by James Scudamore – review
James Scudamore's unnerving third novel, centring on a former psychiatric hospital, unravels its secrets with invention and skillIn his essay on the writer and teacher John Gardner, Raymond Carver...
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Lion Heart by Justin Cartwright – review
Justin Cartwright's latest is both playful and perplexingJustin Cartwright's 15th novel opens with a pair of epigrams, one the definition of fiction from the OED; the other a typically ruminative quote...
View ArticleThe editor strikes back
Long thought lost to ruthless commercialism, some recent publishing triumphs suggest editors could be making a welcome comebackA finished copy of Roberto Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas...
View ArticleWhat writers risk in not repeating themselves
Jonathan Lethem's output is impressively diverse, but it's not going to win him a dedicated readershipThe biographical details printed on the back flap of his sprawling, ambitious new novel, Chronic...
View ArticleWhere a writer is from is neither here nor there
We should beware of paying more attention to a writer's nationality than their fictionIn the literary world, there is perhaps nothing more insulting than being labelled "insular". Any accusation such...
View ArticleThe Easton Ellis generation
American Psycho left readers polarised, but its author has had a decisive influence on a new generation of writersGavin James Bower was a model and now is a writer. He is tanned, thin and has short...
View ArticleThe great literary walk
Joshua Ferris's new novel The Unnamed poses an old question why has walking inspired so much great writing?The second half of Joshua Ferris's frequently brilliant, often perplexing The Unnamed is a...
View ArticleThunderstruck review Elizabeth McCracken's unforgettable stories
The nine tales of lost and lonely souls in McCracken's second collection coalesce into something breathtakingThe title story of Elizabeth McCracken's second collection of short fiction, Thunderstruck,...
View ArticleBoyhood Island by Karl Ove Knausgaard review – the third book in the series...
The six-part My Struggle series continues Knausgaard’s exploration of the frustrations and pleasures of growing up, but his latest volume marks a departure in styleWhatever your knowledge of Karl Ove...
View ArticleUp Against the Night by Justin Cartwright review – brilliant but frustrating
Justin Cartwright’s novel is curiously lifeless until a revelatory change of narratorIn his review of a previous Justin Cartwright novel, 2002’s White Lightning, DJ Taylor noted: “It is a desperately...
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