‘If the space you live in is beholden to a landlord, then that space is not really yours, and with every day that you spend in it a sense of alienation is cemented.’
Magnus Rena reviews ‘The Lodgers’.
Review | The Partial Truth by Rowland Bagnall
‘The Vast Extent offers a thoughtful exploration of believing and its origins, considering not only how ideas are formed but how they come to be revised.’
Rowland Bagnall reviews ‘The Vast Extent’ by Lavinia Greenlaw.
Review | The Spirit of the Times by Patrick Cash
‘A very physical and evocative portrayal of the town is built, even if a more beautiful story perhaps hides in its shadows.’
Patrick Cash reviews Pity and The Night Alphabet.
Essay | The Secret Earth by Charlotte Stroud
‘It is for this reason that I never go to my field at this time of day but wait instead until I can be alone. Only then, in my experience, will it show me a secret.’
Charlotte Stroud on the secrets of the countryside.
Review | Capote and the Treachery of the Decade by Hallam Bullock
‘As with all tortured artists, we are often more comfortable recoiling at their wounds than considering them.’
Hallam Bullock on Answered Prayers and Capote’s Women.
Review | The Brightness of a Single Instance by Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou
‘Kneeling in peace or protest, Ono asks us to pick up the scissors, the pen or the match so as to creatively strike out, seek peace and light up the dark.’
Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou reviews Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind.
Fiction | A Brief History of Dogs in Barcelona by Kieran Wyatt
‘I noticed she had listed three options. To hurt her. To get her attention. To make a point. I remembered learning about the rule of three at school, and I realised that it was probably a universal thing – or maybe she only used three examples when she spoke English.’
New fiction by Kieran Wyatt.
Fiction | Sump by Sheila Armstrong
‘When you are unhappy wherever you go, the common denominator is you, Teddy’s ex-girlfriend told him, with a cruelty so uncharacteristic as to be true.’
New fiction by Sheila Armstrong.
Review | The Truth about My Mother by Lucy Thynne
‘In A Woman’s Story, Ernaux more than fills de Beauvoir’s feminist and existentialist shoes. And as the family’s ‘archivist’, she is every bit the dutiful daughter.’
Lucy Thynne on Annie Ernaux’s A Woman’s Story.