Riaffiorano le terre inabissate

Now winner of the 2020 Goldsmith Prize. I have proposed in the past that given its rather obvious lack of diversity the prize should be renamed the Celtic Prize. So how appropriate to have a “state of the nation” book where the only characters not white are green. Essex Serpent (by Sarah Perry), Riv Leggi tutto

OMFG this book. So there's a man, emerging from a kind of loss of self, still only halfway out. There's a woman retreating to a safe place, but it turns out to be something else. There is a conspiracy community, or several. Anxiety: selfhood, brexit, climate change. There is transformation and renewa Leggi tutto

"As I said, in July..."Recommended - and one that would make a good Goldsmith's contender" - now winner of the Prize!! Is logic in any sense the right method to be applying here? Two years ago I had the pleasure of reading a range of innovative fiction from UK/Irish small independent presses as part o Leggi tutto

A middle-aged man, recovering from a breakdown, takes a job from a strange fellow he meets down by a river. His occasional lover inherits a house in a village with some unusual locals. They both hear voices. And then there are rumours of a new species of human in England, green people that come from Leggi tutto

Intelligent and eerie, masterfully crafted and inconspicuously relevant, the new M. John Harrison novel draws a lot from his previous work – from "Climbers" to his recent flash fiction, via "The Course of the Heart", "Signs of Life" and even the Kefahuchi Tract novels – subliming the already seen an Leggi tutto

Un libro strano. Non è tanto la trama – per quanto ricca – il centro del racconto, quanto l'atmosfera che Harrison sa creare, un clima di attesa, straniamento, confusione. Come confusi sono i due protagonisti, persone che arrivate alla mezza età realizzano di non aver costruito nulla e ora non sann Leggi tutto