I reviewed Attica Locke’s debut novel Black Water Rising back in 2014 and wasn’t particularly impressed at the time. The Cutting Season, her second novel is a more accomplished and enjoyable crime novel. Almost all the action of The Cutting Season takes place in a historic Louisiana mansion called Belle Vie, once a working sugar…
Homer and Langley by E L Doctorow is a moving and elegiac novel, based on the real life Collyer brothers. The Collyers were wealthy New York bachelors who lived a reclusive life together in their four-story brownstone in New York. They were compulsive hoarders of all kinds of useless items and were found dead, buried…
I read Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico by Javier Marías and translated by Esther Allen, as part of Novellas in November, but am only getting around to reviewing this little gem now. Coming in at a mere 56 pages, Bad Nature is one of those books that is perfectly formed but you wish…
Read more No 450 Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico by Javier Marías
I managed to have a coffee with a good friend before everything closed up again for two weeks and it was nice to feel briefly normal! The brilliant Stephen Sexton, who I have raved about before on the blog, has only gone and won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature 2020 for his first collection,…
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. – Italo Calvino
Moonshine & Metaphysics
Book reviews, author interviews, music reviews. A revue of reviews!
What I've been reading
“If you don't know ... when the lights will go out ... you might as well read." --- Clive James
Postgraduate-led research group sharing research and bringing together academics and practitioners to explore contemporary Irish literature.
Writing, concerts, theatre and a little bit of travel
