We’re more than halfway through the month of #MARM and today is Margaret Atwood’s 80th birthday. Naomi and I are supposed to be deep into discussions about The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments (her spoiler-free launch of The Ts discussion is here). But I’ve still got my head in
When I first read The Handmaid’s Tale, I was a teenager. In a few years, I would start to keep records about my reading: a log and handwritten (or typed( passages that I favoured along the way. The log in a notebook (usually practical rather than pretty) and the
The first volume of Maya Angelou's autobiography begins with Marguerite arriving in Stamps, Arkansas, at three years old, with her brother, Bailey, one year older, in the care of Miss. Annie Henderson, their grandmother ("Momma"). It moves from the store to the churchyard, from hymn-singing to beatings. It crosses time and space fluidly.
! Do you have an author in whose works you repeatedly get stuck? Doncha love the '80s cover? You're just sure you're going to love them, but you can't seem to read them? That's what had happened with me and Edith Wharton. Well, that's not entirely
When I run up against the term 'modernism' I turn the other way. (I don't know why, but I think it has something to do with Ulysses.) But, when I come across the term 'romantic' I turn back. (I know the reason for this: it lies with the epigraph to Possession, which
