Literary Review | For People Who Devour Books
In the Current Issue: Howard Davies on Bernard Mandeville * Claire Harman on Emily Dickinson * Stephen Smith on Piet Mondrian * Colin Jones on fools * Thomas Hodgkinson on Hollywood flops * Dennis Duncan on blank pages * Peter Davidson on Henry Fuseli * Deirdre McCloskey on Ayn Rand * Richard Davenport-Hines on Clarissa Eden * Peter Marshall on monasteries * Laura Ashe on medieval women ...
Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway - review by D D Guttenplan
D D Guttenplan: Smiley Redux - Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway. In May 1966, an aggrieved John le Carré wrote to the editor of the Soviet newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta in response to a critical review.Noting that his books were at that point unavailable in the Soviet Union, he set out his stall for the benefit of (sadly imaginary) Russian …
About - Literary Review
About. Literary Review covers all the latest books each month, ranging from history and biography to memoir and fiction.Each issue contains sixty-four pages of reviews from some of the leading authors, journalists, academics and thinkers in Britain in a variety of fields. It aims to reach a wide audience of readers who enjoy intelligent and accessible writing.
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller - review by Stevie Davies
Andrew Miller’s moving new novel is set in the ‘Big Freeze’ of 1962–3, Britain’s coldest winter since 1739. From December through to February, there was no let-up. Snowdrifts formed walls that were metres high; rivers and lakes froze; transport ground to a …
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Current Issue - Literary Review
Howard Davies on Bernard Mandeville * Claire Harman on Emily Dickinson * Stephen Smith on Piet Mondrian * Colin Jones on fools * Thomas Hodgkinson on Hollywood flops * Dennis Duncan on blank pages * Peter Davidson on Henry Fuseli * Deirdre McCloskey on Ayn Rand * Richard Davenport-Hines on Clarissa Eden * Peter Marshall on monasteries * Laura Ashe on medieval women * Charles Shaar Murray on ...
Held by Anne Michaels - review by Paul Genders
The Canadian writer Anne Michaels’s style is often praised for its lyrical qualities. It could be argued, though, that it exemplifies exactly what gives the word ‘lyrical’ a bad reputation. A line from the Canadian author’s 1999 poetry collection, Skin Divers, is representative: ‘We are ...
William Morris: A Life for Our Time by Fiona MacCarthy - review by …
At the age of thirty-seven William Morris went off to Iceland to reassess his life (or lives) to date. From a sunny, well-heeled childhood – his father was a bill broker who died shortly and luckily before his business collapsed – Morris went to rough-tough Marlborough, where he learnt next to nothing because, he said, ‘next to nothing was taught’, and on to Exeter College, Oxford ...
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng - review by Tom Williams
T ensions between the public and the private lie at the heart of Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors, a novel predominantly set in Penang in 1921 and immersed in the social mores of the British Empire.Lesley Hamlyn is married to Robert, a barrister eighteen years her senior. Theirs is a polite, passionless marriage, burdened but also sustained by deep silences and long-stored secrets, the two ...
The Three Graces by Amanda Craig - review by Kathy O’Shaughnessy
Amanda Craig’s ninth novel, The Three Graces, juggles multiple plotlines. In the pretty Tuscan countryside a Russian oligarch lives in fear of being poisoned, well-to-do expats and younger English folk deal with first-world problems, immigrants hide, …