Recovery by John Berryman
Long before James Frey was breaking Oprah Winfrey’s fragile heart by fictionalising his time in addiction therapy and the behaviourContinue Reading
Tag: death
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Many people have told me that The Waves is Virginia Woolf’s best work. Many people have told me I should readContinue Reading
Shaking Hands with Death by Terry Pratchett
When I was young it was normal practice for supermarkets to fill the spaces around the tills – where peopleContinue Reading
Notes on Suicide by Simon Critchley
Slowly, the land recedes. I am writing this on a ferry, pushing its way across the surprisingly flat Bay (orContinue Reading
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Iran. Who knows much about it? We’ve all seen Argo, we’ve all heard of nuclear weapons, we’re all aware thatContinue Reading
Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann
Rosamond Lehmann is not a widely-read novelist any more, though in the middle of the 20th-century, she was both popularContinue Reading
Life, End of by Christine Brooke-Rose
Well, this is a rather painfully depressing read. Life, End of was Christine Brooke-Rose’s final novel, one written in herContinue Reading
Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
Both the blurb and the author biography of my 1980s edition of Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf state that thisContinue Reading
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Sticking with middle-brow Scottish literature, I followed Irvine Welsh’s Filth with another dark, scary, psychological story about a disturbed ScottishContinue Reading
The Missing of the Somme by Geoff Dyer
Yes, I read another book by Geoff Dyer and, yes, because it was a structurally complex non-fiction text featuring aContinue Reading
