[for The Telegraph, 19/9/24]
Intermezzo, as it arrives in 2024, seems to me a deeply millennial novel, in that it’s suffused not just with the concerns of her previous books, but also with an elegiac awareness of how we eventually stop being young.
All in books
'for money, your honour': on inigo philbrick
[for the LRB, 8/8/24]
Inigo Philbrick looked the part. He wore ‘tailored Milanese suits and shirts’; he lived in a flat on Grosvenor Square; ‘he was known by the maître d’s at some of the toniest restaurants in town.’ He is said to have begun his day by screaming ‘Inigo! Inigo! Inigo! Inigo!’ in the shower.
on natasha stagg
[for The Telegraph, 8/12/23]
You sense that Stagg wants to be pithy more often, but refuses to trust the instinct. In an age where shrill essayists swarm the internet, writing as monotonously as they can, she prefers to inhabit grey areas.
the year in fiction (2023)
[for The Telegraph, 23/11/23]
Those who think fiction today is crushed under ideology were proven wrong in 2023. Instead, politics came in sidelong, with more cunning than belligerence.
what is internet art actually doing?
[for the LARB, 11/11/23]
The most gorgeous internet art offers us pictures of time preserved, whether peachy or strange or sad.
on jon fosse
[for The Telegraph, 12/10/23]
Fiction critics too often use “dreamlike”: it’s almost never accurate. But for Fosse’s writing, it is – both because dreams have a compulsive logic, and because they rework, in thin disguise, the many dreams we’ve had before.
bret easton ellis, 'the shards'
[for 4Columns, 13/1/23]
I’ve always associated Ellis with a yearning for tenderness, however occluded it may seem. Even the brutalised voids of Less than Zero are holes where emotions should be.
lauren oyler, 'fake accounts'
[for the Telegraph, 13/2/21]
Lauren Oyler is suspicious of sincerity.
the end of beckett studies
[for the TLS, 10/2/21]
To the extent that Beckett’s work is “about” anything, it’s about knowing what not to say. It deserves a critical style that’s self-critical, because certainties are of zero interest; what person lives in certainty about the way they feel?
racine, or gossip girl (a mention)
[for The Drift, 3/2/21]
It’s gossip as pathology.
don delillo, 'the silence'
[for the Telegraph, 24/10/20]
These people are broken automata, broadcasting only fear. But DeLillo wants to have it both ways – uncanny conversation in a novel set at home.
douglas stuart, 'shuggie bain'
[for the Telegraph, 1/8/20]
Calling alcoholism “tragic” doesn’t mean that it’s especially grand – it can seem repetitive and banal – just that alcoholics hurt those around them by making them witnesses.
ali smith, 'summer'
[for the Telegraph, 1/8/20]
Everything is lost, or a losing game. Some losses are personal: parents, lovers or friends. Others are national: a diminished and soured UK.
andrés neuman, 'fracture'
[for the Telegraph, 14/6/20]
Humans are storytellers: we’re always making each other up.
naoise dolan, 'exciting times'
[for the Telegraph, 12/4/20]
Edith is too good for this novel: she has depth of feeling, and knows that Gucci is “tourist bait”.
anne enright, 'actress'
[for the Telegraph, 23/2/20]
The characters in Enright’s novels are absorbing because they seem recognisable in an unassuming way: they’re as lovely, boring and complex as the people outside the books.
eimear mcbride, 'strange hotel'
[for the Telegraph, 25/1/20]
The bad pun, the wryly fastidious questions, the slowness of the inquiry: listen to Beckett, there like a ghost.
romesh gunesekera, 'suncatcher'
[for the Spectator, 30/11/19]
Empires are born to die; that’s one source of their strange allure.
how to write with donald judd
[for Frieze, 25/10/19]
Judd’s value to critics is in the economy of his style. He’s elegant, and pleasurable, if slightly risky to read; tranches of Judd may cause the mental equivalent of shortness of breath.
lucy ellmann, 'ducks, newburyport'
[for the Telegraph, 12/10/19]
Ellmann’s novels are like wannabe archives that she’s forcing to moonlight as tales told.