This book reaction was written by Friday blogger Annie Reid. I’ve just started reading the new Amy Hempel, The Dog of the Marriage, and although I’m only a few stories in, already I think I can say: this is a magnificent book. These are short stories that seem like poems, with each new line not adding more description, necessarily, . . .
This post was written by Friday blogger Annie Reid. For those of you who missed Fingersmith, Affinity, or Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters is just a touch like Dickens. Except with hot, lesbian sex. Here she delights the Independent. Giant dildos, a cat named Tink and her next book all make an appearance.
This post was written by Friday blogger Annie Reid. There’s a bit of a firestorm over on the Guardian web pages over the editors’ introduction to the new anthology New Writing 13, compiled by Ali Smith and Toby Litt, who apparently use the opportunity to “make a sweeping condemnation of the subject matter, writing style and preoccupations of female writers”: . . .
That’s it from me for the week, folks. The Bitter Fruit-loving Annie Reid takes over tomorrow and most Fridays. Have a good weekend.
This year marks the centenary of Jules Verne’s death. In the current Smithsonian, Doug Stewart lays blame at Hollywood’s doorstep for Verne’s U.S. reputation “as a lightweight.” Poor translations and a formula-happy editor also helped pigeonhole him as a writer of simplistic sci-fi, Stewart argues: Verne’s most popular novels, written in the 1860s and ’70s, seem to be upbeat paeans . . .