#19 Till Kingdom Come by Andrej Nikolaidis
I was offered an opportunity to review this novel by somebody who knew of my love for thrillers, novels with abrupt changes of focus, and the work of Eastern European writers in general. Let’s begin with that middle category – books with abrupt changes of focus. Two of my favourites, Peter Hoeg’s Miss Smilla’s […]
The art of writing and Makerism
A couple of weeks ago I sold something to somebody and then, a few days later, I saw her wearing it and she told me how much she liked it. Then she asked me why she had never seen me wearing anything I’d made. It’s a bigger question than it sounds because I think it […]
#18 Depths, by Henning Mankell
There seems to be a Scandinavian preoccupation with measurement. In Peter Hoeg’s novel, Borderliners, it is the measurement of time that is central to the narrative, in Depths, by Henning Mankell it is the distance between the surface of the ocean and the sea bed. Or at least, that’s how it begins. Lars Tobiasson-Svartman is […]
#17 The Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco
I’m one of those odd creatures who believes Umberto Eco’s masterwork to be Foucault’s Pendulum, not The Name of the Rose. The Prague Cemetery did not challenge this view for me. It’s a fantastically constructed novel (as in fantastical, rather than fantastic) which drapes a veil of fiction around some of the most unpalatable facts […]
# 16 Breakfast with the Borgias by DBC Pierre
A novel (or in this case novella) by DBC Pierre should be approached with caution. Unlike Vernon God Little nothing much coruscates in Breakfast with the Borgias: a mobile phone is briefly thrown on a fire like the funeral of modern communications and a sandal strap on an old woman’s foot crackles and snaps like […]
Recent Comments