Cormac McCarthy is one of those writers whose work I have long looked forward to diving into, but have held back for some reason or other. (In this case, because I want to read the body of work as a whole, preferably on some hazy sun-filled holiday.)
I read The Road last year and found it [...]
There’s a line in Tender is the Night when Fitzgerald says of a moderately talented individual, “Fine dives have been made from flimsier springboards.”
Fitzgerald was a skilled observer and a nuanced writer, perhaps not a masterful storyteller, fair enough, but a talented writer all the same. Bestowed with an impressive springboard, he never achieved what [...]
This review of Raymond Carver’s Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? is the third in my series of five short fiction reviews.
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please
Raymond CarverVintage 2003, Paperback, 192 pages, £7.99
Carver is widely regarded as a master of the short story, a man who reinvigorated an old form and made it his own, churning out [...]
Jeannette Walls’ memoir is the story of a childhood spent moving from town to town and hovel to hovel, propelled along an increasingly unhinged adventure by her father and hero, Rex.
Dreamer, drinker, and erstwhile architect of the titular house of sand, Rex Walls has charisma to burn. That he does so, to the ground, is [...]
