The childhood terrors of Judith Hermann
The German writer recalls her grandmother’s collection of voodoo dolls and her father’s surreal invention of a stunted lodger living in the suspended ceiling
The agonies of adolescence: The Party, by Tessa Hadley, reviewed
In post-war Bristol, two sisters fall in with a group of arrogant young men and soon feel themselves painfully inferior
My summer of love with God’s gift
Studying in Russia in 1994, Viv Groskop falls in love with a Ukrainian rock guitarist named Bogdan Bogdanovich and accompanies him on a visit home
Wasting away
Aged 14, Hadley Freeman succumbed to it, and was offered many conflicting explanations. She herself finally attributes it to a fear of approaching womanhood
The trapdoor opens
In a powerful and ultimately heartening memoir, the Oxford professor describes being trapped in a mutinous body, and what it does to the spirit
A kingdom of the mind
When an Irish shipbuilder’s son was crowned king of a Caribbean rock in 1880, few would have guessed how long this eccentric monarchy would last
An immorality tale
Has there been a better novel this century than Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation? There might not…
The dear departed
I can think of few novels as bleak or dispiriting as Yiyun Li’s 2009 debut, The Vagrants. Set in a…
Author’s notebook
To my surprise, what I miss most about life before the lockdown are parties. As others pine for restaurants and…
Under his skin
Bill Bryson on writing, loss and the wonders of the human body
