book reviews, and my academic research archive
For those of you who are interested, my new novel Radical Magic comes out on 1st September, and it s available for reading and requesting on NetGalley right now! It is 1808. In Great Britain King George s health is precarious. Magic is struggling against science. Searching for a purpose in life, the Elfin gentleman Sir Auberon Continue reading New novel on NetGalley!
I despaired of finding a copy of Spent until I saw it stacked on an unreachably high shelf in the Bristol branch of Forbidden Planet. I had to find a tall staff member to get it down for me, and it was signed! It may be a graphic novel but it wasn t selling to Forbidden Continue reading Spent, by Alison Bechdel
A longer version of this review will be published in the Ancillary Review of Books sometime later in 2026, but here s the short version. I liked The Meteorites so much. Helen Gordon’s narrative (subtitled Encounters with Outer Space and Deep Time just so you re warned) begins with a meteoroid’s birth, somewhere between Mars and Jupiter Continue reading The Meteorites, by Helen Gordon
Not knowing anything about Italian literature I am reviewing here with trepidation, since I suspect that Sapienza is not a figure of enormous international popularity like Elena Ferrante, but relatively obscure, known mainly to Americans writing graduate essays on gender. She’s considered to be well-known enough to the anglophone market for two of her novels Continue reading Meeting in Positano,…
Some years ago I went thoroughly into Margaret Irwin s Tudor novels, and liked almost all of them. This month I read, possibly for the first time since I was a teenager, her Stuart novels, and liked only one of them. Royal Flush (1932) is an absolute cracker. The story of the youngest sister of Charles Continue reading Margaret Irwin s Stuart novels
Most cleverly the V A began some years ago to bring out new editions of memoirs by figures from the fashion world. I had no idea about this at the time, which is silly because that was my business, but I wasn t looking for contemporaneous memoirs. I snapped up Shocking Life in a museum shop last Continue reading Shocking Life. The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli
I like Bryher. She was a novelist, a poet, a ludicrously rich heiress (born illegitimate but she was still her father s heir) who used her wealth for good, and for the support of the arts. She saved over 100 refugees from Nazi Germany up to 1940 by receiving them in her house in Switzerland from Continue reading Visa for Avalon, by Bryher
Some of you will remember that I write fiction: it s all on the Peachfield Press page, if you re interested. I ve just begun a new project, self-publishing my new novel RADICAL MAGIC, and you can join the throng of interested observers by following the link below. It ll come out in the autumn. RADICAL MAGIC is a historical Continue reading A brief advertising break
How did I get this? Let me count the ways. Did I buy it? If yes, what was I thinking? Was it a favour to the bookseller? It might have been at a science fiction convention when I was distracted or had few other choices. Maybe it was a present. Trouble is, it s an American Continue reading Of Monsters and Mainframes, by Barbara Truelove
This novel blew my socks off. Or stunned me rigid. Or nearly made me cry but didn t quite make me laugh. It certainly made me furious about the behaviour of at least one of the characters (little Joanne Henderson s appalling grandmother) but not many others because the cleverness of this novel, told in very brief Continue reading Mouthing, by Orla Mackey