Tag: Short stories
Beyond beach-lit
Tessa Hadley's new novel finally sees her make the leap from popular to serious fiction. Someone should tell her American publisher
Extra geography
We were fourteen. We decided to fall in love with the next person we saw
From people to person
In China, collectivist ideals are enshrined in the very language, so it is not surprising that rebellion often takes a linguistic form. These two novels examine the struggle for self-expression in modern China
How deadly your taste buds, my sweet
Some people will go to amazing lengths for the chance to savour a flawless white truffle
Towards the day
Prospect's Thomas Pynchon correspondent is battling his way through "Against the Day"—and recording the experience
Chaos and horror
Don DeLillo, an undoubted master, has a gift for creating an atmosphere of inchoate dread. Yet his latest novel feels flat and static and lacks a sense of purpose. At least it has a superb ending
Lives not led
Hard-headed and surprisingly right wing, Lionel Shriver does not fit the conventional image of a novelist. Her latest work is a subtle examination of the difficulties of decision-making.
Between the lines
Cormac McCarthy's dislike of publicity has made him one of the commanding absences of American letters. But the huge success of his latest novel, The Road, may change that for good
Oration for a dead hero
My husband died a national hero, exalted by the president. But I know them both for worthless dogs
Slog’s dad
Slog always said his dad would come back one day. And, in the spring, he got his wish
Between the lines
Inspector Morse is one of Britain's most successful literary television adaptations. I first watched it while grieving for my father, and will always associate it with that time
Hearing myself think
I am at Heathrow airport because there's someone I have to meet. I just don't yet know who
Points of departure
Transformations, miracles and slippages are at the heart of David Malouf's rich and poetic fiction. Malouf is the great chronicler of Australia's lost, Aboriginal part of itself
Snared by the past
Ian McEwan's new novel, the story of a young couple's disastrous wedding night, is both a triumphant piece of social history and a reminder of the misery caused by an earlier age's sexual decorum
The woman at the window
An Englishman in New York shows that chivalry is not dead, though the woman he saves has other ideas
Irony and genius
Daniel Kehlmann's bestselling novel offers a comic view of some of Germany's great thinkers. In doing so, it mocks the very idea of German high culture
Bombast as art
In portraying Hitler as the product of a diabolical incest, Norman Mailer has taken fictional ambition to a remote peak of implausibility
Magic & childhood
Three tales of innocence from Israel
The skull beneath the skin
Mixing high-flown philosophy with sickening violence, Derek Raymond's crime novels have long been neglected. Now, finally, they are being republished