Classic Novellas Week: Proxopera by Benedict Kiely #NovNov22
No 357 The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf, translated by Susan Bernofsky #ripxvii
No 358 The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson #ripxvii
The Pull of the Past – Three books on memory from Maxwell, Capote and McClenahan
No 399 Lucinella by Lore Segal for #1976Club
My second read for the 1976 Club this week is the wacky and wonderful Lucinella by Lore Segal, which would also make a perfect read for Novellas in November. This slim book is a satire on the New York literary scene which utilises meta-fiction, magic-realism and a sense of dream-like whimsy to great effect. Depicting…
No 403 The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
I’m telling you stories. Trust me. It has been well over twenty years since I read Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges are not the Only Fruit and Sexing the Cherry in quick succession. I’m not sure why I never returned to her writing, but on the strength of The Passion, it seems that I have been missing…
No 430 Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood #readingirelandmonth21
Caroline Blackwood is probably not best known for her writing. Heiress to the Guinness fortune, Blackwood was celebrated as a great beauty and dazzling ‘muse’ courtesy of her high-profile marriages first to the artist Lucian Freud, then to the composer Israel Citkowitz and finally to the poet Robert Lowell. Born into an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family from Ulster, she was presented as a debutante…
Read more No 430 Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood #readingirelandmonth21
No 431 Foster by Claire Keegan #ReadingIrelandMonth21
It’s Contemporary Literature Week on Reading Ireland Month and Claire Keegan’s Foster certainly falls into that category as it was published by Faber in 2010. However, I could just as easily have included it in next week’s Classic Literature category because that is what Foster will undoubtedly become. A classic. In fairness, Foster could also…
Read more No 431 Foster by Claire Keegan #ReadingIrelandMonth21
No 436 Tamburlaine Must Die by Louise Welsh
I had initially lined this short historical novel up to read as part of Novellas in November, but didn’t manage to fit it in. I’m a big fan of Christopher Marlowe’s plays and the myth-making that surrounds him as a figure, so was keen to read Louise Welsh’s fictional retelling of the last murky days…
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