Reading

Dodge and Burn by Seraphina Madsen

Review of Dodge and Burn by Seraphina Madsen

Imagine Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Hunter Thompson engaging in a wild, drug-fuelled orgy somewhere out in the Arizona desert, and by some mystical process conceiving a daughter who then turns around and gives them the finger, inverting their male-dominated…
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Why I still love bookshops

I’ve written about bookshops a lot on this blog over this years. There’s a good reason for this. For me, good bookshops have always been inseparable from the joy of reading. When I was in my early twenties and working…
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The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner: Review

I think I have a problem with over-hyped books. Although the hype is never true, I always end up believing it, and come to a book with ridiculously high expectations that can never be satisfied. A similar thing happened a…
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Cover of Jacks Hill Road

Jacks Hill Road by Jennifer Grahame

We’ve all driven down one of those streets, haven’t we? One of those streets where the lawns are manicured, the pavements are clean and uncracked, and the houses are hidden away behind large gates. One of those streets where you…
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Review of The Pimlico Kid by Barry Walsh

Writing about Indian Magic recently reminded me of another book set in the 1960s, one I read a while ago and wanted to write about, but never got around to. That book is The Pimlico Kid by Barry Walsh, a…
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Indian Magic by Balraj Khanna

Lately I’ve been reading quite a few books with complex structures and experimental elements. In the middle of all that, it was good to read Indian Magic, a simple enough story told in a traditional, chronological narrative. We start with…
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The Chocolate Shop Perverts by Ernest Alanki

Outsiders make great literary characters. Their otherness makes them naturally interesting characters, and it’s also fascinating to see “normal” people and social conventions through their eyes, shining a fresh light on things that usually seem very familiar. Also, don’t we all feel…
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Review of Glow by Ned Beauman

Glow is a wonderfully inventive book, with some beautiful writing. Unlike Beauman’s previous two books, this one has a contemporary setting, and it’s very contemporary, taking on things like corporate globalisation, drug culture and surveillance. The plot is entirely implausible, but…
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