According to Martin Amis, that sharp satirist and white male English literary giant, there are two things that literature can’t do. The first is sex. Amis agrees with his father, Kingsley (that bigoted white male English literary giant), who believed that sex has the effect of de-universalising the reading experience. Good sex, Amis junior opines,…
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Death comes to us all; only the fortunate are allowed to grieve. Half the World in Winter is Maggie Joel’s second novel, which centres around the domestic life of a middle-class family in Victorian London. The patriarch of the family is Lucas Jarmyn, the only son and heir of a railway entrepreneur. When we meet…
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In the last months of my mother’s life, I fell into the first blushes of what I thought, at the time, was love. Chris was nine years older than me, could fix cars and had a crooked nose that reminded me of breakages. The most romantic moment of my life, to date, is…
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Tom Lubbock was an English writer and illustrator who worked as the chief art critic of the Independent from 1997 to 2011. In 2008, Lubbock was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour and given only two years at the most. Until Further Notice, I am Alive reveals his journal entries during his illness and demise,…
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There are times when I complain about things in my life which, really, don’t warrant complaining about: Australia’s performance at the Olympics, getting out of my shift at work ten minutes late when I’m anxious to get home, the phenomenon that is Fifty Shades of Grey, university assignments. The list goes on. Thankfully, life is…
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When one feels lost in life, lacking in direction, miserable, one should go on an adventure. I know this thanks to books such as Eat, Pray, Love, Tales of a Female Nomad, Unfinished Business, and A Thousand Days In Venice. Adventures are transformative. Especially if they are difficult and involve travel. They’re particularly good after…
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Drowning Rose by Marika Cobbold (Aphrodite’s Workshop for Reluctant Lovers) is a novel about guilt, grief and the heart-wrenching effects of schoolgirl manipulation. It centres around Eliza Cummings, whose estranged Godfather makes contact with her, asking her to visit him in Sweden. She hasn’t been in contact with him since the tragic death of his…
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