Nicholas Taylor-Collins https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html Contact me Blog A new Beckett? Yasmin Zaher’s ‘The Coin’ and dispossession Nicholas Taylor-Collins Books Learning to read Samantha Harvey’s ‘Orbital’ ‘The Outsider’ redux: Nadifa Mohamed’s ‘The Fortune Men Sea Witches and Hostage-Taking: A Dive into ‘Drift’ by Caryl Lewis Historical fiction, intersectionality, and secrecy: Yael van der Wouden’s ‘The Safekeep’ Bastardising epic: Shehan Karunatilaka’s ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ Parallel forms in Victoria Chang’s ‘with my back to the world’ No pain, no poetry: nostalgia in Karen Solie’s ‘Wellwater’ and Vidyan Ravinthiran’s ‘Avidya’ Gizzi the space man: Peter Gizzi’s ‘Fierce Elegy’ Past it? Speed, simulacra, and celebrity in Rebecca F. Kuang’s ‘Yellowface’ (Post-)postmodernist elegy: Stephen Sexton’s ‘If All the World and Love Were Young’ The careful book in V.V. Ganeshananthan’s ‘Brotherless Night’ A new atrocity: C.D. Rose’s ‘We Live Here Now’ Quotidian narrative in David Szalay’s ‘Flesh’ Surviving solitude in Caleb Azumah Nelson’s ‘Small Worlds’ Vis-à-vis dystopia in Paul Lynch’s ‘Prophet Song’ The afterlife in Rachel Cusk’s ‘Parade’ Architectural and uncanny shape in Benjamin Myers’s ‘Cuddy’ What is hyper-contemporary literature? The forest of discovery in Jon Fosse’s ‘A Shining’ Language and the queer journey in Arinze Ifeakandu’s ‘God’s Children Are Little Broken Things’ Cellular vulnerability in ‘The Magic Border’ by Arlo Parks The between spaces in Jason Allen-Paisant’s ‘Self-Portrait as Othello’ The anti-Bildungsroman: Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Demon Copperhead’ Privacy Notice The true reality of dreams in Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian’ To poem: dynamic memory in Anthony Joseph’s ‘Sonnets for Albert’ Exhaustion and exhaustive: Colum McCann’s ‘Apeirogon’ Two families, alike in dignity: Christina Thatcher’s ‘How to Carry Fire’ Two spatial poetics: Niamh Campbell’s ‘This Happy’ Derry in absentia: Bernard MacLaverty’s ‘Midwinter Break’ Slow reading: Adrian Duncan’s ‘Love Notes from a German Building Site’ A stretched tapestry: Bernardino Evaristo’s ‘Girl, Woman, Other’ ‘Lot’ by Bryan Washington: a battle for an ordinary Writing (a) genealogy: ‘Surge’ by Jay Bernard The consolation of animals: Téa Obreht’s ‘Inland’ Pre-reading and re-reading Michael Longley’s ‘The Candlelight Master’ Personal politics and the modern English language: Mary Jean Chan’s ‘Flèche’ ‘Judge for Yourself: Reading Hyper-contemporary literature and book prize shortlists’ Suzanne Collins’s ‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’: Hobbes for the twenty-first century Trans* today or yesterday? Andrea Lawlor’s ‘Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl’ Anne Enright’s ‘Actress’ (part 1): finding a mother Top 5 blogs of 2020 Anne Enright’s ‘Actress’ (part 2): the age of consent The beyond: ‘Night Boat to Tangier’ by Kevin Barry Whose fault is it anyway? Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Testaments’