Jami Attenberg’s novel is about what we wrap up. The cover of The Middlesteins appears to be a fast-food burger wrapper: quintessentially flavourful but fleeting. Edie’s mother watches Edie’s father’s heart beat beneath the skin of his chest. Edie notices the bones at the top of her chest, poking out like
In her work as a journalist, Sara Wheeler has often inhabited “borderlands of turbulence and uncertainty”, and travelled into dangerous territory. Readers familiar with Catherine Bush's earlier novels might recall Arcadia from Rules of Engagement, her fascination with war and violence, and the question that haunts her: “What would you be willing
It begins with a short but vividly drawn scene: two lovers alone in a room in Paris in 1917. Sensorily rich and broadly sketched: the reader is immediately engaged. Not only by the substance, but by a couple of unexpected phrases therein: questions arise. Those questions are soon set aside
One of the reasons for The Shining's success is that it was not simply a horror story, but the story of a family struggling to make a go of it, in a situation which becomes horrific. A hopeful but hesitant mother: "For the first time she let herself believe that this
When the angels invaded the plotline of "Supernatural", I stopped watching weekly. I prefer stone rabbits and hedgehogs in my flowerbeds, over white winged statues. And when a girlfriend told me that the child she lost at full-term is an angel now, I struggled to keep my face expressionless, silently repeating
