Although Ali Smith has moved away from the textually arousing miasma of earlier novels Hotel World and There but for the to write more contemplative aAlthough Ali Smith has moved away from the textually arousing miasma of earlier novels Hotel World and There but for the to write more contemplative and quietly furious works that explore contemporary angst amid the backdrop of an eccentric fixation (such as pop artist Pauline Boty in Autumn), her novels remain lyrical, unique, and wholly Alicentric. In her most recent one, a grouchy artist ministering to her sick father is ambushed by an old friend fascinated by the history of a wrought-iron lock. The story freely meanders through a farcical series of interactions with two incendiary millennials, ruminations on an e.e. cummings poem and the origins of ‘hello’, taking us swiftly back in time to the tale of the smith who originally carved the ivy-leaved designs of the lock. A mysterious, eccentric, mercurial, and softly spoken novel deftly smithed with Smith’s trademark warmth and humanity....more
A pleasing fact—one of the most popular Ukrainian novels is a strident, experimental, and full-fanged onslaught on the country’s culture, history, andA pleasing fact—one of the most popular Ukrainian novels is a strident, experimental, and full-fanged onslaught on the country’s culture, history, and machismo, narrated by a feminist writer working in America.* The prose is constructed in torturously poetic page-long sentences, with frequent shifts from first to second to third person, blurring the line between autofiction and narrative, as the narrator recounts an abusive relationship within a broader Bernhardian canvas combining a cryptic and hilarious onslaught of snark with reflection, comment, and free-association oddness (a chunk of which is lost to this Ukrainely naïve reader). This sort of novel is relegated to DIY indie presses with ten subscribers in the UK. In Ukraine, it was on the bestseller list for ten years. Viva Ukraine!
* Note: Patriotism or pride of country should involve a continuous act of national self-interrogation and the tireless pursuit of improvement through the examination of history, rather than falling knock-kneed before a flag. Ukraine understands this....more
This slight fable illustrates why Boris Johnson has no friends. People only befriend you so they can ride you to whatever career victory they crave, lThis slight fable illustrates why Boris Johnson has no friends. People only befriend you so they can ride you to whatever career victory they crave, like a flea on a Big Dog, knowing full well you may be used as collateral to protect the Great Leader. In the process, your soul is slowly sucked from your body, leaving you a baggy-eyed robotic husk of a non-person, like the talentless sap Liz “Pork Markets” Truss. For Americans, replace Boris with Trump, and Truss with Mike Lindell. ...more
Guardant rant supremo from Croatia’s cross between Lucy Ellmann and Louis Ferdinand-Cèline. A suffocating 200+ pages of spleen from a woman in an abusGuardant rant supremo from Croatia’s cross between Lucy Ellmann and Louis Ferdinand-Cèline. A suffocating 200+ pages of spleen from a woman in an abusive relationship, who narrates her tale with blackly comic bitterness and violent candour—periodically tiresome, yet confrontationally exhilarating. ...more
A hyperkinetic bildungsroman-from-heck, slapping Freud around the chops with a frenetic Junoesque narrator with more sass than a CSS compiler. Packed A hyperkinetic bildungsroman-from-heck, slapping Freud around the chops with a frenetic Junoesque narrator with more sass than a CSS compiler. Packed with loud LOLgasms and zipping along at a methedrine-pumped pace, Dora is a novel that snaps at head-quacks in favour of the transgressiveness of making snotty adolescent art. Hoot-and-a-half....more
Posing as a public-school arriviste, Nicki Smith arrives in a position at the soi-disant Jacques Lacan Foundation, a repository for fustians with a pePosing as a public-school arriviste, Nicki Smith arrives in a position at the soi-disant Jacques Lacan Foundation, a repository for fustians with a penchant for weak wordplay and the byzantine theories of the French theorist, second only to Derrida for impish intellectual charlatanry. Posing as posho Lettuce Croydon-Smith, Nicki manoeuvres herself in a world of glamorous grifters and Ivy League sorority queens, in a satirical realm spiritually in sync with the offices of Quink magazine in Alexander Theroux’s Laura Warholic. The novel is a fairly tame comedy of manners, set in a nonspecific zone of fashionable artists and eggheads.
The narrator frequently italicises all the Americanisms in her prose, overlards her vocalisations with like tonnes of likes, and sleeps with avant-garde filmmaker Diego as she is put in charge of the French translation of a new Lacan notebook (having massaged her CV with spurious bilingual brag). As she clashes with the primly attired Connecticut crème de la crème, her struggle to maintain the con and retain the poise of her idol Kate Moss becomes an increasing schlepp. Finlay’s novel is a farcical send-up of the culture of blaggers and carpetbaggers that has become the modus operandi for seemingly every pursuer of power, from influencers to politicians, as their talents for thrusting themselves forward leave the rest of us pining for something better....more
Using this particular to vent a peeve—why include the university you attended in your bio? In the blurbs of old, this was a way to reassure the haughtUsing this particular to vent a peeve—why include the university you attended in your bio? In the blurbs of old, this was a way to reassure the haughty reader that the literary quality was assured if the author received their First from Harbridge or Oxyale, whereas now we’re supremely uninterested in your cacademic achievements, we merely want your prose to shake us awake from our mopey holes of despair. By mentioning your alma mater, are you displaying your insecurity at being accepted in the pantheon of poindexters, are you trying to signal to awards committees and reviewers who attended the same school that you deserve big prizes, or are you simply confusing your CV with your bio? These are the questions, folks. Whatever the reason, you should never mention where you “took” your PhD in a bio, because this will only turn the reader against you. Beware. This book is one of the most tedious Dalkeys I’ve read recently, a flatly prosed humorless deconstruction of the detective novel, or something. Snooze. ...more
Sometimes amusing and deceptively readable (short chapters and tuggy staccato sentences), this novel ultimately collapses under the punishing weight oSometimes amusing and deceptively readable (short chapters and tuggy staccato sentences), this novel ultimately collapses under the punishing weight of the narrator’s excruciating narcissism. The story is narrated by a character unselfconsciously living her life as though her life itself is literature, trying to elevate a banal, self-indulgent soap opera of casual affairs and middle-class über-hip bed-hopping twattery into hallowed prose—the result being screeds of wince-inducing pseudo-literary non-profound wankeroony, riddled with laughably pretentious conversations with the men-friends she arrogantly refers to as “The Lover” (Dumas, innit?) and “The American”. The chapters have irritating titles stolen from European movies, indie rock bands, and literary classix, to help propel the novel’s super-literary literariness to proper heights of hallowed wowness. If this review sounds like the unfair rantings of an exasperated reader, that’s because this review is the unfair rantings of an exasperated reader, close to beddy-byes and needing a kip. But this really is one outrageously self-aggrandising and annoying piece of patience-testing bollocks from a writer utterly besotted by her own narrative allure (the story is autofiction, so the mirror-mirror-on-the-wall drag of this really drags). I’m off to bed. If this review seems unfair in the maw of Monday, I will amend....more
This short primer on the funkiest fictioneers in North Macedonia (for the geographically rusty, Macedonia is a region in the Balkans, not a country), This short primer on the funkiest fictioneers in North Macedonia (for the geographically rusty, Macedonia is a region in the Balkans, not a country), includes sixteen stories from the hippest contemporary writers. Among my favourites, the satire on post-communist bureaucracy ‘A Slip of Paper’ by Dragi Mihajlovski, where an academic encounters the waning powers of fascistic bank clerks; ‘Strained’ by Tomislav Osmanli, a where a party leader arrives at A&E having enveloped an entire computer and a range of acolytes from party headquarters; ‘The Nonhuman Adversary’ by Kalina Maleska, where a translator is tormented by the undwindling page count remaining in his word document; and Žarko Kujundžiski’s ‘Story Addict’, where a deranged fiction-junkie howls for his latest fix of literary smack. The collection showcases a range of styles, from interior melodrama, realist snapshots, to quiet nightmares. Translator Paul Filev has Englished these stories wonderfully, bringing these North Macedonian marvels to the page with truckles of flair. An essential read for any purveyor of post-communist European fiction. ...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
This long out-of-print volume is the autobifography of an erotomaniac not famous for starring in seventies hard- and softcore movies, most notably JeaThis long out-of-print volume is the autobifography of an erotomaniac not famous for starring in seventies hard- and softcore movies, most notably Jean Rollin’s Lips of Blood, and serves as a manifesto of a life utterly devoted to fleshly pleasures above all else. Bourdon is a woman so unconstrained by stuffy bourgeois conventions, she plunges herself into frequent orgiastic encounters with practically everyone in her vicinity (on one trip to Africa she sets out to sleep with 26 men for her 26th birthday) and then later any canines in her vicinity (the lucky pooch receives doggy fellatio before intercourse), in a memoir that clearly revels in a form of performative shock. Bourdon portrays herself as a hardcore Aphrodite, spreading luscious lust as a way of shaking the world of staid squares awake, while frequently espousing iffy right-wing views and dismissing psychiatry as another societal straightjacket and coming across as a rabid egomaniac prone to inappropriate sexual assaults. The AIDS epidemic would throw a fire blanket on the sort of hypersexual world Bourdon craved (with two-hour humping breaks at work), and although her utopia is one of cum-splattered grossness, her randy audacity makes her truly a posterchild of the “liberated” 1970s woman. [P.S. The translator is the redoubtable Barbara Wright]....more
Debut novel from a lesser-known (in English) member of the Gruppe 47, the radical clique that produced the likes of Gunter Grass and Heinrich Boll, anDebut novel from a lesser-known (in English) member of the Gruppe 47, the radical clique that produced the likes of Gunter Grass and Heinrich Boll, and her only work in translation apart from Offside. The novel is a bizarre, borderline unreadable work narrated by a child whose attention-to-microscopic-detail of the world around him leads to pages and pages of alienating descriptions of furniture, the alphabet, and the eating habits of a tyrannical stepfather. The novel is a series of surreal tableaux that capture the world of post-war German bourgeois from the remove of a weird child showing symptoms of severe autism, featuring comic episodes such as a man harried by a series of sheep who park themselves on his person and refuse to budge until a farmer shoos them off. The rest of the novel is an infuriating, opaque, mix of surrealism, Robbe-Grilletan descriptive detachment, and repetitions and nonsensical prose rhythms reminiscent of early Beckett. But worse than that sounds. Elsner, a devoted Leninist, committed suicide when the Berlin Wall fell, shown in the 2000 movie No Place to Go....more
