A wish-fulfilment romance: Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney, reviewed
Rooney’s fourth novel is another case of compare and contrast, with various pairings of anxious characters struggling through their twenties and thirties in picturesque Dublin
Emily Dickinson was not such a recluse after all
Far from being closeted in her bedroom, her letters show that she was still travelling in her mid-thirties, and taking pleasure in gardening and the glories of nature
The changing face of Ireland
A dead poet’s dangerous aura continues to haunt his daughter and 23-year old granddaughter in this story of an unhappy family set in rapidly changing Ireland
Woman of mystery
A counterfactual history of modern America serves as a backdrop to the life of the enigmatic ‘X’ – a woman of multiple personae and impenetrable disguises
Ian McEwan’s capacity for reinvention is astonishing
Ian McEwan’s latest novel is unusually long and autobiographical. It’s surprising in other ways, too, says Claire Lowdon
Variations on a theme: To Paradise, by Hanya Yanagihara, reviewed
My daunting brief: to tell you about Hanya Yanagihara and her new, uncategorisable 720-page novel in 550 words. It’s the…
Anthony Holden is nostalgic for journalism’s good old bad old days
After a career spanning 50 years, 40 books and about a million parties, Anthony Holden has written a memoir. Based…
Reality and online life clash: No One is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood, reviewed
Some writers — Jane Austen, for example — get to funny sideways, using irony and understatement. The American poet and…
Aunt Munca’s murky past
Kiss Myself Goodbye. It sounds a bit like a William Boyd novel. It looks likea William Boyd novel, too: the…
Less radical, less rich: Elizabeth Strout’s Olive, Again is a disappointment
Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer-prize winning Olive Kitteridge (2008) is the novel I recommend to friends who don’t read much. Talk about…
Gen Xers v. Millennials: White, by Bret Easton Ellis, reviewed
Q: What’s worse than listening to someone ranting hysterically about Donald Trump? A: Listening to Bret Easton Ellis ranting hysterically…
How to be good
Suffering, wrote Auden, takes place ‘while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along’. His…
Tim Parks’s one-sided ‘love story’ is a long trudge in the rain
The title of Tim Parks’s 17th novel is false advertising, because Thomas and Mary: A Love Story is barely a…
The Butcher of Bosnia holes up in an Irish backwater
The cover of Edna O’Brien’s 17th novel sports a handsome quote from Philip Roth: ‘The great Edna O’Brien has written…
If there’d been a Gilbert and Sullivan opera about Roland Barthes, it might have sounded like John Banville’s The Blue Guitar
The Blue Guitar is John Banville’s 16th novel. Our narrator-protagonist is a painter called Oliver Orme. We are in Ireland,…
Fathers and sons — seen from multiple angles
‘People talk about their childhood and it’s so mundane. I don’t remember much about it, if I’m honest. I can’t…
