TeaHe named the wind only in the British Isles, Helm is a strong northerly gale that blows down the slopes of Cross Fell in the Pennines and is known for its unusual cloud formations. Helm has been known to remove roofs, haystacks, trees, and riders from their horses. Twenty years in the writing, Sarah Hall’s
TeaThere is a growing literature of maternal flight: novels about women who abandon not only their husbands but also their children. In the real world, men are more often fugitives; The father’s relation to family life is considered incidental, while motherhood is revered as an internal state. This means that women who “un-mother” themselves are
A A reclusive interior designer named Paul travels from his home in Orkney to the Norwegian coastal city of Stavanger for the most unusual commissions. A datacenter containing huge Internet servers is located near the fjord on the outskirts of town, and a prestigious art magazine is paying large sums of money to refurbish it.
IIn the summer of 1937, two exhibitions sponsored by the Nazis opened in Munich. For the Degenerate Art exhibition, hundreds of confiscated works by banned modern artists, including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, were collected: a mocking display of the alleged anti-German sentiment of contemporary culture. The show also served as a counterpoint to
IIn the summer of 1977 a lightning strike struck a substation on the Hudson River, knocking out power throughout New York City. A wave of looting spread over two nights of darkness as teenagers from Harlem and the Bronx stole expensive items from downtown stores. They took the speaker system and turntables to experiment at
RDew, the protagonist of Claire Way Watkins’ latest novel, has retreated from the world to live in Nothingness Flats, a cinder-block cabin in the Nevada desert. On indefinite leave from her job at an environmental organization, Rose works on her Al-Anon recovery, goes hiking and joins the protests against Yellow Pine of the title: a
AAbout 14% of Ireland is moorland: vast areas of moss-covered land, beneath which layers of ancient history have blended into the moist grass-black turf. Captivated by their unearthly beauty, Seamus Heaney wrote some of his best poems about bogs – and about the bodies discovered, perfectly preserved, in their eerie depths. Sheila Armstrong’s excellent second
I‘Creating a sandwich: soft white roll, roasted chicken, sharp cheese. A bright little slice of tomato. After finishing this review I will go to the supermarket and buy a Hot Cook for myself. sink my teeth into This was not my idea. I caught Laura McPhee-Brown’s Wry Doll Lust. One of his characters craves the
AVNI Doshi’s second novel is narrated by an unnamed woman in suburban America who is shocked to hear her husband announce that he is leaving her. She does not truly love him, but she sees their marriage as a structure or “container” for her own existence. A former novelist, his writing has stopped since the
AAmber Fan, the 22-year-old protagonist of Kit Fan’s heartfelt and elegy second novel, is ready to say goodbye. Goodbye to her parents, who have booked a midnight flight from London to Hong Kong to enjoy their sunset years selling the family restaurant in London’s Chinatown. And goodbye to the old Chinatown that he and the