The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox
Reviewed by Max Dunbar In Lords and Ladies, his Faerie novel, Terry Pratchett quotes an old folk rhyme: My mother said I never shouldPlay with the fairies in the wood…
Empireland: How Imperialism has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera
Reviewed by Liz Dexter “If we don’t confront the reality of what happened in British empire, we will never be able to work out who we are or who we…
A Rage in Harlem and The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes
Reviewed by Annabel I first discovered the mad world of Chester Himes’s Harlem in an old Allison & Busby paperback of The Crazy Kill, the third novel of his Harlem…
Whitman in Washington by Kenneth Price
Reviewed by Rob Spence Kenneth Price is the co-director of the Walt Whitman Archive, and one of the leading experts on the poet, having published widely on his work. This…
A Theatre For Dreamers by Polly Samson
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Tired of lockdown, hankering to see new places, and in desperate need of some sun: that describes most of us at this point. New in paperback,…
A Virtual Image by Rosalind Brackenbury
Reviewed by Helen Parry Until Michael Walmer reissued her first novel, A Day to Remember to Forget, I had never heard of Rosalind Brackenbury. She seems to be scandalously obscure…
There’s No Story There – Wartime Writing, 1944-1945 by Inez Holden
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton This is one of two recent releases from Handheld Press that cover aspects of wartime experience – in this case life in a huge munitions factory…
The Immortals of Tehran by Ali Araghi
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Who hasn’t thought of poets as semi-mythical, Byron-like figures, with access to otherworldly visions? The truth is, most of the time poetry takes as much drafting…
Diary of a Film by Niven Govinden
Reviewed by Annabel Diary of a Film follows a few days in the life of an auteur film director who is in Italy with his two lead actors to promote…
Commemorative Modernisms by Alice Kelly
Review by Rob Spence Modernism has always resisted precise definition, and in recent years it has been normal in literary-critical circles to use the plural form in order to emphasise…
Circles and Squares: The Lives and Loves of the Hampstead Modernists by Caroline Maclean
Review by Karen Langley The early part of the 20th century was a period when modern art was flourishing. New ways of living were being explored, abstract art forms were…
Love Lives by Carol Dyhouse
Reviewed by Harriet It’s probably a common experience among people who read a lot that sometimes two books will overlap in unexpected ways. This has just happened to me. I…
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
Reviewed by Lory Widmer-Hess Schizophrenic. The very word is a trigger for aversion, a signal to run away, with its spiky, spluttered consonants and imprisoned vowels, four foreign syllables meaning…
King of Rabbits by Karla Neblett
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Imagine a teenager who skips school, smokes, drinks and disappears from his girlfriend on a regular basis; a young man adrift whose main interests are vandalizing…
Heavy Light: A Journey through Madness, Mania and Healing by Horatio Clare
Reviewed by Peter Reason It was on a family skiing holiday that Horatio Clare finally went mad. This was the culmination of a period of high activity and stress, coupled…
A History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel
Reviewed by Max Dunbar The Age of Acceleration In 2019, the Unherd website carried an article by Gerard DeGroot, about the Chang’e 4 moon landing. ‘Whenever something big happens in space,…
Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry by Margaret Kennedy
Reviewed by Harriet If you’ve heard of, or read, Margaret Kennedy at all, it’s likely to be her 1924 novel The Constant Nymph. Written when she was 28, it made…
Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce
Reviewed by Heavenali Miss Benson’s Beetle is Rachel Joyce’s latest novel – now published in paperback. Women are at the heart of this wonderful story – and we see the…
Hyphens & Hashtags* by Claire Cock-Starkey
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Subtitled “The stories behind the symbols on our keyboards” (the subtitle linked to the main title via an asterisk rather than a colon), this is a…
The Stone Age by Jen Hadfield
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton It’s seven years since Jen Hadfield’s last collection, Byssus, came out. This was the point when I really became aware of her work although it was…