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Editor's Choice
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Editor's Choice Review: Black Robe
Posted Yesterday, 1:26 PM by louisa_w4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 2 comments
I've always ranked Brian Moore as one of Ireland's premiere writers, up there with John McGahern and William Trevor. In my mind's eye, I see McGahern presenting the viewpoint of Catholic Ireland, Trevor giving the dispossessed Protestant angle on things and Moore representing Northern Ireland. Of course, I'm being unfair in ring fencing three of our greatest writers in such a cavalier fashion. All are far more versatile that that…
Read moreEditor's Choice Review: Rock Springs
Posted 09 July 2010, 5:07 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 0 comments
A number of years ago I tackled Richard Ford's novel The Sportswriter and found it heavy going, so I was reluctant to take on another of his works. However, I picked up this collection of his short fiction and decided to give him another chance. And, boy, am I glad I did. Rock Springs gathers a number of stories that generally take place in and around Great Falls, Montana, and feature characters either fallen on hard times or living a life of limited scope of opportunity…
Read moreEditor's Choice Review: What If Our World Is Their Heaven?
Posted 30 June 2010, 10:52 AM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 0 comments
Philip K. Dick has become something of a cultural icon, a classic example of the artist becoming famous after he is dead. What is especially sad is the fact that PKD died before Bladerunner, the movie based on his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, was finished and released. There is no question that this movie started the process of putting PKD on the map in terms of a wider audience and he would have finally started to make some real money. Over the years, a massive industry devoted to the recording of PKD's thoughts and ideas, and to the analysis of those thoughts and ideas, has developed…
Read moreEditor's Choice Review: Never Let Me Go
Posted 16 June 2010, 4:02 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 4 comments
I'd been meaning to read this novel by Kazuo Ishiguro for some years, having thoroughly enjoyed his The Remains of the Day. I was also intrigued by the premise, which utilises a major science fiction trope in a literary manner. This has developed into a trend in recent years, with several literary novelists dipping into SF for their ideas: Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham, The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, and others…
Read moreEditor's Choice Review: Louisiana Breakdown
Posted 31 May 2010, 3:24 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 0 comments
Welcome to Grail, Louisiana! A little hole of a town near the Gulf - next to nothing and just beyond reality - where hoodoo meets Jesus and the townsfolk pray to them all. That's what it says on the inside jacket cover of this beautifully presented hardback from Golden Gryphon and it pretty much sums what you can expect from the always entertaining Lucius Shepard…
Read moreEditor's Choice Review: Cocaine Nights
Posted 14 May 2010, 2:49 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 13 comments
Quite apart from the fact that Cocaine Nights is by J.G. Ballard, the premise of the story was enough to attract me to this novel. Charles Prentice arrives in the Spanish resort of Estrella de Mar, an exclusive enclave for the rich and retired British, hot on the heels of news he has received that his brother Frank has pleaded guilty to the murder of five people in a house fire. Charles can't believe that his brother would be involved in such a thing, and, indeed, the police don't believe Frank's confession to be true. So, what is the reason for Frank's self-destructive impulse?
Read moreEditor's Choice Review: Hothouse
Posted 30 April 2010, 12:06 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 3 comments
Hothouse by Brian Aldiss concerns itself with an Earth that has stopped rotating on its own axis and about the Sun. One half is permanently in sunshine, the other in darkness. On the bright half, vegetation has grown out of control. A giant multi-levelled tree dominates everything. Among its branches live the remnants of humankind, short green people of limited intelligence. They and a few species of insects are all that is left of animal life. They are vastly outnumbered by a plethora of mobile vegetation...
Read moreEditor's Choice Review: The Tax Inspector
Posted 13 April 2010, 3:33 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 0 comments
The Tax Inspector by Peter Carey tells the story of a young heavily pregnant Tax Inspector called Maria Takis tasked with conducting an audit of Catchprice Motors in the small backwater of Franklin on the outskirts of Sydney in the State of New South Wales, Australia. That may sound boring, but it's the Catchprice family that are the real stars in this ever so slightly bizarre novel…
Read moreEditor's Choice Review: Bigot Hall
Posted 31 March 2010, 11:32 AM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 0 comments
I picked up Bigot Hall by Steve Aylett not knowing what to expect and it just blew me away. It is anarchic black humour at its best, filled with witty observations and completely off the wall characters, whose volatile natures and violent dispositions I have never met the like of before. I never laughed so much at such outrageous brutality; I'm utterly ashamed of myself…
Read moreEditor's Choice Review: The Road
Posted 10 March 2010, 11:59 AM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 5 comments
The Road by Cormac McCarthy tells the story of a man and his son as they make their way along a road towards the coast through a ravaged landscape. Along the way, they occasionally encounter other people in various states of decrepitude and/or savagery. A worldwide catastrophe has destroyed everything to such an extent that there is little or no evidence that there can ever be any kind of recovery and the few people and resources left are declining rapidly. Nothing much actually happens and the story is unrelentingly grim, but there are two aspects to this novel that make it one of the most worthwhile experiences of my reading life...
Read moreEditor's Choice Review: A User's Guide to the Millennium
Posted 18 February 2010, 10:46 AM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 1 comments
A Users Guide to the Millennium by J.G. Ballard is an absolute treasure chest for anyone interested in 20th century pop culture. It's a collection of essays and reviews that spans 30+ years, culled from a wide range of magazines and covers such subjects as art, history, science, cinema and science fiction and such personalities and icons as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Dali, William Burroughs, Howard Hughes, Einstein, Warhol, Henry Miller, the list goes on…
Read moreTerry Pratchett: my case for a euthanasia tribunal
Posted 03 February 2010, 11:48 AM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 5 comments
Should those with an incurable illness be allowed to choose how and when they die? In his Richard Dimbleby lecture, fantasy author Terry Pratchett, who has a rare form of Alzheimer's disease, makes a plea for a common-sense solution…
Read moreAuthor JD Salinger dies at his home
Posted 29 January 2010, 10:58 AM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 7 comments
JD Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, has died at the age of 91. The reclusive novelist died of natural causes at his home in New Hampshire, according to a statement from his son released by his literary agent...
Read moreMedia Reacts to iPad Launch
Posted 28 January 2010, 12:06 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 0 comments
Katie Allen writes: The media has reacted with delight to the launch of Apple's iPad, although the e-reader capability attracted mixed reviews…
Read moreIan McEwan signs with Amazon.com for backlist
Posted 27 January 2010, 3:18 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 0 comments
Booker prize winner Ian McEwan has become "the first mainstream British author" to sign an exclusive deal through Amazon to double the royalties he receives on his back catalogue, reports The Times...
Read moreWhitewashing Job at Bloomsbury
Posted 22 January 2010, 3:39 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 0 comments
Bloomsbury USA plans new artwork for Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore after the original cover depicted the book's brown-skinned heroine as white…
Read moreWill e-books spell the end of great writing?
Posted 08 December 2009, 12:50 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 5 comments
How much have our perceptions of reading and writing changed now that you can write a novel on a laptop and read through it on a Nintendo games console? This Christmas could be the moment when our idea of curling up with a fat novel are transformed for ever, says Tim Adams.
Read moreIn Praise of Robert Holdstock
Posted 03 December 2009, 2:46 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 0 comments
Robert Holdstock, who has died aged just 61, proved that fantasy could be literature.
Read moreNo typewriter for old men: Cormac McCarthy to part with beloved Oli…
Posted 02 December 2009, 2:56 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 0 comments
Veteran novelist to auction treasured typewriter that he bought in a pawnshop in 1963...
Read moreShallow Graves: The Novels of Paul Auster
Posted 26 November 2009, 12:02 PM by writing4all | Posted in Editor's Choice | 0 comments
An interesting look at the novels of Paul Auster from The New Yorker…
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