Let’s talk about epics. I’m talking big, immersive novels that swallow you up for, say, 500–800 pages, often following people or families across years, decades, even generations. Books so ambitious in scale and detail that they consume years of their authors’ lives and inflict a degree of physical and emotional torment likely to leave them […]
Tag Archives: writing
August
09
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
posted by Ms K
Gird your loins, Readheads — we’re heading back to Ireland. Again. I’m ready to abandon these exquisitely tormented Irish novels for something soothing. A bathroom cleaning manual. Aldi catalogue review perhaps. When I finished this one, I optimistically picked up Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest thinking it might offer relief. If you’ve read that one, you’re probably laughing […]
August
05
Transcription by Ben Lerner
posted by Ms A
For those unfamiliar with the name, Ben Lerner is an American poet, novelist, essayist and critic. He is an English professor at Brooklyn College and the author of The Topeka School, Leaving the Atocha Station and several acclaimed works of poetry. You might not find Lerner’s latest novel, Transcription (released in April), at the airport […]
May
13
A Rising of the Lights by Steve Toltz
posted by Ms A
A Rising of the Lights by Steve Toltz is not a book that sells itself easily. A novel about fraudsters, failure, hypnotism, artificial intelligence, sleep talking and emotional collapse sounds less like fiction and more like the daily observations of my friend Paddy in the dog park. It’s hard to imagine the pitch meeting going […]
January
09
All Fours by Miranda July
posted by Ms A
Hold the HRT for this wild and wonderful window into the menopausal mind. In All Fours, a 45-year-old artist, wife and mother is planning a solo road trip from LA to NY for work. With a determination to prove to herself that she’s a steady and reliable person (and not the loose cannon she is […]
Readhead 