Cult feminist SF from Japan—strong dystopian concepts marred by the stroppy-teenagery narrators and incoherent storylines in the second half of the coCult feminist SF from Japan—strong dystopian concepts marred by the stroppy-teenagery narrators and incoherent storylines in the second half of the collection....more
The early chapters of this barmy novel from a female Oulipian evoke, as the translator describes, Zazie in the Concrete (sic), with its playful punnagThe early chapters of this barmy novel from a female Oulipian evoke, as the translator describes, Zazie in the Concrete (sic), with its playful punnage and uproarious comic mangling of the language as the teenage narrator unfurls her bizarre non-story about her father, her sister, and a concrete mixer. As the novel progresses, the punning and frantic toing-and-froing down digressive cul-de-sacs makes the non-story harder to non-follow, and fatigue soon arrives. As the translator Emma Ramadan writes in her afterword, the original French text was so densely allusive and polylingually punnilicious that translating the subtleties of the author’s humour was always going to be a monumental task, and on this occasion, the singular oddity of the work fails to flame into English. ...more
Fictionalised first-person monologues from the staff at a French palliative care unit. The author, an Argentinian member of the OuLiPo, captures the mFictionalised first-person monologues from the staff at a French palliative care unit. The author, an Argentinian member of the OuLiPo, captures the moments of tenderness, reprieve, callousness, loneliness, and humour from a working environment where the staff are relentlessly faced with the brute fact of death. Far from being a grim read, Berti’s short novel has the quality of a quirky documentary, and is a compassionate examination of a class of people we can unironically and unsentimentally call fucking heroes. ...more
A mere twenty-seven years after Dalkey Archive shelved their plans to publish Theroux’s Fables, the collection is finally available from the unstoppabA mere twenty-seven years after Dalkey Archive shelved their plans to publish Theroux’s Fables, the collection is finally available from the unstoppable Tough Poets Press, among the finest unburyers of lost classics active today. Opening with the fables previously published in illustrated volumes such as ‘The Great Wheadle Tragedy’—short fancies of doggerel less charming when stripped of their artistic accompaniment—the volume travels mainly to Europe for a series of character studies similarly rich in accumulated detail and Jamesian perceptivity as those in Early Stories. The novella ‘The Curse of the White Cartonnage’ sees two scheming antique hunters seeking to snaffle precious cartonnage from newly arrived neighbours, with invariably parlous consequences. One recurring feature in these stories is Theroux’s love for trivia, ribboning every story with a blizzard of knowledge woven into the tapestry of the characters’ histories, a technique that occasionally detracts from the story, but makes for a truly encyclopaedic and incredibly rich reading adventure in the manner of the sexiest Victorian prolixers. The volume also features several fantastical poems in the fable mould....more
When a series of Trumpian hillbillies are murdered in the very racist town of Money, Mississippi—each victim twinned with a mutilated black corpse cluWhen a series of Trumpian hillbillies are murdered in the very racist town of Money, Mississippi—each victim twinned with a mutilated black corpse clutching their severed testicles, a corpse that disappears from the morgue soon after—two beleaguered black detectives are sent to investigate. Through a wise-cracking local waitress, they meet a 106-year-old root doctor who has documented every victim of lynching in the country, stretching back to the 1910s. The victims seem to have one thing in common—a connection to KKK murders of the past. As in several of Everett’s works, the plot is incidental to the blistering satire and snark-tastic political comment (consider the lesser-known epistolary smackdown A History of the African-American People [Proposed] by Strom Thurmond for another marvellous example).
Poking into the open wound of white supremacy in the rural south in the pre-Biden era, Everett wields his kiln-fresh poker, creating hilariously racist caricatures that capture the blatant racism unleashed with the election of Trumplethinskin. He takes to the thriller with vim, maintaining a brisk pace in short chapters, balancing mordant humour with a venomous critique on America’s unsolvable race riddle, a problem sitting dormant since the end of segregation in the south—illustrated in a powerful sequence of the names of the KKK lynching victims. A master of sharp dialogue, punchy and unflinching satire, Everett once more serves up an irresistible novel that performs another necessary scissor-kick to the gut of modern America....more
In Cavanaugh, a man named Cavanaugh purchases a bobblehead doll of Trump’s US supreme court appointee Brett Kavanaugh—a man with a string of sexual asIn Cavanaugh, a man named Cavanaugh purchases a bobblehead doll of Trump’s US supreme court appointee Brett Kavanaugh—a man with a string of sexual assault allegations longer than your patience—for his daughter, Cavanaugh’s daughter. In possession of this bobbling bobbleheaded doll, Cavanaugh careens from his middling life into a surrealistic Brett Kavanaugh-inflected world featuring multiple bus rides, pitchers of beer (“I like beer!” Brett said at his infamous senate hearing in 2018 to excuse his trashy misogynistic youth), buckets of chicken wings, slobby stalking of waitresses, and a mysterious internal voice that sounds strangely like that of the narrating narrator who narrates. Orbiting Cavanaugh’s Kavanaugh-coated Kavanaughty universe is his creepy neighbour O’Reilly, who Cavanaugh may or may not be turning into with every pitcher of beer he consumes. Kornreich’s wild and actually very funny (real LOLs here, not literary LOLs, like proper comedy LOLs) novel appreciates the hilarity in repeating the word Cavanaugh at every opportunity, while serving up a weird yet potent critique on the moral torpor of the nation, as the self-leprosy caused by the likes of Cavanaugh continues to cripple American democracy. Unique, strange, compelling, and memorable, Cavanaugh is an instant cult classic....more
In Ducks, Newburyport, Ellmann wrote a seminal monsterpiece that perfectly captured the infinite loop of anxieties of a post-Trump world, as well as nIn Ducks, Newburyport, Ellmann wrote a seminal monsterpiece that perfectly captured the infinite loop of anxieties of a post-Trump world, as well as nattily pulling off an Oulipo-strength feat of writing an 1000-page novel in list form. An almost perfect marriage of the formally fearless and the universally communicable, Ducks was an explosive, hilarious, and pathologically readable piece of utter genius. In her first essay collection, Ellmann maintains the fume, fury, and fiery incision of her novel across fourteen blazing essays on the patriarchy, the climate, the epic beastliness of most humans, and certain orange-faced loser ex-Presidents who never have and never will do a “fantastic job”. (P.S. For some reason I received the Picador India edition with this misleadingly sugary cover and not the Galley Beggar one, which I ordered)....more
In 1987, novelist/journalist Alannah Hopkin and modernist titan Aidan Higgins settled into their home in the town of Kinsale on the southern coast of In 1987, novelist/journalist Alannah Hopkin and modernist titan Aidan Higgins settled into their home in the town of Kinsale on the southern coast of Ireland, having struck up their romance the winter before c/o the matchmaking skills of poet Derek Mahon. Their home at slight remove from the sea was to become their main residence for the rest of Higgins’s stint in this realm. Here, he completed one story collection, a book of travel pieces, one novel, a three-volume memoir on his childhood and life’s loves, and a short book on the perils of blindness. Hopkin, twenty-two years younger, chose to concentrate on journalism to help support them.
A lucid memoir of two writers with fierce personalities cohabiting, Hopkin presents an iridescent insight into the crankiness, kindliness, and candour of a writer whose fiction was a form of baroque autobiography, whether the loss of grandeur in Langrishe, Go Down (based on the Higgins clan’s sliding social status), the epic European sprawl of wanderlust in Balcony of Europe (informed by Higgins’s wide travels), or the epistolary exchange of love-missives in Bornholm Night-Ferry (drawn from his relationship with a Danish poet). Hopkins creates an intimate portrait of a writer prone to acidic outbursts (his comments on Hopkin’s own writing are a mix of helpful and offensive—she would publish no fiction until after his death), uninterested in modern culture (no TV in the house, niche musical tastes), a cool raconteur prone to social gaffes, and a mild-mannered and loving man content in his cocoon of literary eccentricity, frequently furious at the marginalisation of his talents by a predictably unreceptive public.
Higgins’s medical decline is a catalogue of calamities, from partial blindness, vascular dementia, self-harm episodes, various strokes, and breathing problems. Hopkin is upfront on her own exasperation at this terrifying period, at the frustration at the depth and time of the pain suffered and her own role as beleaguered nurse (he would receive round-the-clock care in a nursing home in his last three years), watching her husband deteriorate over a decade and a half. As a statement of independence as a writer, free to come into her own while penning a tribute to the curious genius who nurtured her fiction-writing chops, this is a superb memoir, a snapshot of the Irish illuminati (count the famous cameos) at the fag end of literature’s cultural status, an unsentimental peep at one verbivoracious man committed to the world within the word, free from fawning (Hopkin was never fond of his fiction, preferring the memoirs) and steeped in the lush landscape of rural Eire. An essential read for Irish lit enthusiasts from here to Malin Head. ...more
