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…
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson may be the perfect novella. It may even, for me, be the perfect book. It is epic yet small, and contains the multitudes of life within a little over 100 pages. The economy of language on display is paired with a surfeit of emotion, giving this slim book the heft…
I am kicking off Contemporary Novellas week with a little known surrealist gem that explores the relationship between a lonely housewife and an amphibious humanoid sea creature named Larry. Yep, you did read that right but please trust me! Mrs. Caliban is, afirst and foremost, a romance. Dorothy is a depressed and trapped housewife whose…
Keith Ridgway’s writing gets under my skin. I first encountered his work when I read Hawthorn & Child a surreal, esoteric crime novel like no other crime novel. Even more intriguing was Animals, a novel which charts the mental and physical breakdown of an unnamed narrator as he wanders around his city and becomes terrifyingly…
Read more No 471 Horses by Keith Ridgway Book 20 of #20booksofsummer20
In Claire Messud’s acclaimed novel The Woman Upstairs, her fascinating character of Nora was held up as a perfect example of an unreliable narrator, to the point where some readers even questioned her sanity. In The Hunters, a collection of two novellas, Messud seems to be dissecting the very idea of what a narrator is.…
Inspired by #NovellaNovember, championed by the brilliant Poppy of Poppy Peacock Pens, I had a look through the 746 with one thing in mind. Length. I was searching for a novella I could read and review before the end of the month and came across Tinkers by Paul Harding which clocks in…
Tolstoy, who is so often associated with the big, the broad and the epic in terms of his writing, was also a master of the intimate and the personal, as seen in the perfectly formed novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Where a novel like War and Peace is cinematic in its exploration of humanity,…
The full title of this collection is The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares: Novellas and Stories of Unspeakable Dread. Joyce Carol Oates might not seem like the first port of call if you are in the mood for some unspeakable dread, but novels such as Zombie, My Sister, My Love and We Were the Mulvaneys all…
Read more No 700 The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares by Joyce Carol Oates
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.
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