Easily one of the strangest books I’ve ever read, this is the second volume of memoirs by the Cornish poet Jack Clemo. I’d read both his novels years ago and some of his verse, but this was new to me. So much is strange about it: the way he reviews his own poetry, his unique brand … More Jack Clemo, ‘The Marriage of a Rebel’
Virginia Woolf’s passport. A postcard from the Literary Passports set from Galley Beggar Press.
If you’ve read any Salman Rushdie previously, you’ll know what you’re letting yourself in for: a tumble of stories, ideas, jokes, allegories and references to books, films, politics, music, art, comic books and contradictory opinions. He specialises in having his cake and eating it and this book is high on the cake-having and eating. And like … More Salman Rushdie ‘Two Years Eight Months & Twenty-Eight Nights’ re-read
I don’t know what to make of this yet. Obviously, I’m already a fan so I already enjoy all the Rushdie traits: linguistic japery, strangeness, pop-culture mingling with high-culture, the dizzying tumble of stories and ideas. I haven’t been able to get a handle on it properly in my first reading but I have a feeling … More Salman Rushdie, ‘Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-eight Nights’
This was the long-delayed fulfilment of a promise to myself to read Marquez who always seemed so off-putting. How wrong I was. Not that this long, strange novel isn’t without it’s challenges. There’s no plot as such, just a long stream of strange and wonderful things happening to the Buendía family over more than a … More ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel García Marquez
Much as I love Conrad, he can be a bit hard-going and I’d held off going back to him after struggling through ‘Chance,’ which is a great story suffocated by way too much of Marlow’s ponderous opinions. By contrast this volume of tales shows off Conrad at his best: strange stories of people buffeted by … More Joseph Conrad, ‘The Duel and Other Stories’
It started accidentally at a church or school jumble sale. I must have been about 13, maybe younger. Rummaging through the books I spotted a tatty paperback with the Saint stick man on the cover. When I was much younger I’d loved ‘The Return of the Saint’ TV show but only, to be honest, because … More Me and the Saint - Relics 10
Only a couple of weeks late but my review of Alix Nathan’s ‘His Last Fire’ has been published by Wales Arts Review. Click here to read it. While you’re there, there are lots of goodies to keep you reading for ages. Most likely, by the time you do there’ll be a new issue with even … More Review of ‘His Last Fire’ in Wales Arts Review
I’ve just read ‘The Sea, the Sea’ in two long chunks over two days which left me with that sensation that you get after consuming a really fine novel of being bigger, more important for having absorbed it. It’s a wonderful novel: an astonishing story, utterly unpredictable, of a self-important theatre director whose determination to … More ‘The Sea, The Sea,’ by Iris Murdoch
There’s a point near the end of this extraordinary novel when the poet Robert Graves is lost in obsessive rage and his accountant tells him ‘to grow up, to stop behaving like a child before it was too late, before he lost all credibility with his peers and his public.’ The accountant, however, is the … More ‘The White Goddess’ by Simon Gough
