‘Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.” The first fictional sentence Anita Brookner ever published, aged 53, in A Start in Life, certainly set a tone. If... Read more »
There is something farcical – grotesque, even – about life played in reverse. A child falling into a tree. A sandwich emerging from a mouth, bite by reconstituted bite. A doctor unstitching... Read more »
The word “Alzheimer’s” never appears in Switzy, Emma Cline’s third novel, which arrives pre-endorsed as a Booker prize longlistee. But we can be certain that it is the disease afflicting its central... Read more »
In times of crisis, there is one person to whom the left still turns for guidance. More than a decade and a half after leaving government, Gordon Brown has mellowed into the... Read more »
The protagonist of Meg Mason’s new book, the follow-up to the 2020 tragicomedy Sorrow and Bliss, is an invisible woman. She might well be standing there but you won’t notice her. She’s... Read more »
When Emmanuel Carrère’s mother, Hélène, died in 2023, at the age of 94, President Macron spoke at her memorial. She had been “perpetual secretary” of the Académie Française, in effect its head, and... Read more »
Artie Dam is a much-loved history teacher from coastal Massachusetts famed for his white socks and old sneakers and who sees a growing hopelessness in his young students. Not only are they... Read more »
The Great Dictator by Matthew Sweet review – the fabulous life of Barbara Cartland | Biography books
Barbara Cartland was famous for dictating her novels. With a pekingese clamped to her hot pink bosom she would lie back on a library couch and exhale a story about virginal girls... Read more »
Virginia Woolf said of Middlemarch that it is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people. In the shallow and infantilising age through which we are living, Colin Thubron dares... Read more »