Hitting the bull’s-eye: Hark, by Sam Lipsyte, reviewed
This is an ebullient, irreverent and deeply serious novel in the noble tradition of Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis (especially Babbitt…
Were the Highland Clearances really a byword for infamy?
There is a degree of irony in the opening chapter of T.M. Devine’s history, lambasting popular previous depictions of the…
What does John Gray’s anti-atheism amount to?
K. Chesterton, in one of his wise and gracious apothegms, once wrote that ‘When Man ceases to worship God he…
More menace – and magic – on the moors
Andrew Michael Hurley’s The Loney was one of the surprise stand-outs of last year, and a worthy winner of the…
The elegiac and the exuberant
Discussions about the short story too often fall into a false dichotomy that can be characterised, in essence, by a…
Get thee to a notary
Given this year’s 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, there was always going to be a slew of new publications; few,…
Muses, nurses and punch-bags
The conceit of this book — the author’s third on Robert Lowell — is strong, although its execution is less…
Bard times
It is fair to say that Jeanette Winterson is not Shakespeare, though I cannot imagine why any authors would accept…
Detroit’s new colonials
In the opening sentence of this subtle and finely poised novel, the narrator, Greg Marnier, known as ‘Marny’, admits that…
Sex, violence and lettuces
There is something cruelly beautiful, delightfully frustrating and filthily gorgeous about a Scarlett Thomas novel. Two family trees open and…
Lights, camera, action
The illuminations of Andrew O’Hagan’s fifth novel are both metaphysical and mundane. In the course of its taut plot, they…
