Category Archives: Authors

Taking her cue – Rosie Garland interviewed about The Palace of Curiosities

The Palace of Curiosities, Rosie Garland‘s debut novel, is a great read (review here). She was kind enough to answer some questions that I had about the book. As well as an author, she is a poet, cabaret artiste and … Continue reading

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Episodic narratives – Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude

Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude shows that the fantastic can be a way of not escaping the world, but exploring it in a very different way. Instead of relying on verisimilitude to allow the reader to escape the world. … Continue reading

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From the Wasteland looking at the stars – Steve Aylett’s Smithereens

Steve Aylett is a singular author and Smithereens, his latest (and possibly final short story) collection centres on the idea of originality. Or perhaps that is just my misprision of it. I’ll come back to this. A word of warning: … Continue reading

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Approaching God – Stephen Hunt’s Secrets of the Fire Sea

Stephen Hunt‘s Secrets of the Fire Sea is a mash up of a Dan Brownesque thriller, steampunk and adventure. I don wonder if there is a little Jules Verne in there as well. Hunt continues mashing up genres in the … Continue reading

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The carnival of realities in Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s children’s books

The carnivalesque, a theory of folk humour developed by Mikhail Bakhtin, is a time of collapse and overturning of conventional boundaries and norms of the world. It is essentially a licensed time of revelry and excitement which the ruling classes … Continue reading

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Pratchett talks about Aching

Just a short note. Aida Emariam in the Guardian has an interview with Terry Pratchett. He talks about I Shall Wear Midnight and the right to die. In a  way I’m happy that this is the last in the Aching … Continue reading

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Two faces of Artemis Fowl

Artemis Fowl is happy. Very happy. Unnervingly so. His latest scheme is to reverse global warming and save the world. He’s being heroic. Its unnerving. He keeps taking and counting in multiples of five as well. Holly Short notices the … Continue reading

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Jeepers, Blyton’s jolly japes to be updated

Alison Flood in the Guardian has a piece on the reworking of the language in the Famous Five books which Hodder, their current publisher, are publishing in August. They will still publish the originals but the contemporary range will modernise … Continue reading

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A reader responds to Bath and Mayne

The news that the children’s author, KP Bath, had been sentenced for the possession of child pornography has (rightly) sparked a debate on children’s mailing lists.  It has reminded me of William Mayne whose writing career was ended by his … Continue reading

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Restoring the World – Ken Macleod’s The Restoration Game

I’ve just finished Ken Macleod‘s The Restoration Game (Orbit, £18.99) and I’m still slightly agog. Lucy Stone is asked by an unknown agency to go back to Krassnia, a small Russian republic in the Caucasus. Her mother, Anna, created the … Continue reading

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