'Fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists'
The phrase the special relationship has become a sarcastic cliche in this country but it has a deeper meaning. There is a tendency in Britain to look down upon the Americans. Their arrogance, their militarism, their mercantilism, their vulgarity vulgarity, an accusation from the nation of Benny Hill to that of Frasier. The progressive [ ]
I was sorry to hear of the death of Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian artist, author and filmmaker. In my twenties I loved the Persepolis graphic novels that illustrated her coming of age under a repressive regime. I have also never forgotten her Guardian interview in 2008: The right to smoke in public buildings is a [ ]
In The Library of Traumatic Memory there are particular words that recur again and again in the text: verdegris heliotrope microcyst masonic copper coccyx obsidian Listed like that from top to bottom gives you a sense of Neil Jordan s novel, written in short, elegiac paragraphs that sometimes spurl into longer paras, again full of significant [ ]
The New York Times has dropped a freelance critic, author Alex Preston, for using AI in a book review. It came after a New York Times reader flagged similarities between the paper’s January review of Watching Over Her by Jean-Baptiste Andrea, written by author and journalist Alex Preston, and an August review of the same book written [ ]
In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson wrote: Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. He remembers that we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful [ ]
I saw a clip of Sally Rooney speaking in Amsterdam that I have been pondering over ever since. Rooney spoke to something called The Hague Group which according to Novara has committed to ending arms shipments to Israel and pursuing justice against Israeli war criminals. For me this was not a typical Free Palestine, anti [ ]
I finished Lily King s extraordinary Heart the Lover last night and immediately read the reviews I d come across while preparing to write this one. This is Rebecca Wait in the Guardian: The university experience is a risky business in fiction. Generally, the feelings are intense, but the stakes are low; it’s all very formative for the individual [ ]
If the doors to the Cheers bar stand always open, and everyone inside knows your name, then the gateway to the successor show is a little harder to navigate. This dialogue is from the first episode, where we meet Niles for the first time, having a coffee with Frasier. Niles is talking: So I said [ ]
Much has been written about our love for true crime, most of this framed as a modern morbidity. True crime documentaries proliferate on streaming. Perfectly normal people get home from their ordinary jobs and settle in for an evening watching representations of assault and gore and the slaughter of the innocent. I don t look down [ ]
ID cards are a bad idea that never goes away. Back in the late 2000s I had a lot of fun attack blogging, not always coherently, the then Labour government s plans to make everybody carry them. Now, with the inevitability of death and taxes, the current Labour government is bringing them back. The feeling in [ ]