It began with her face in marble mosaic, walked upon by thousands each day, in the entrance hall of The National Gallery. Next was Durga Chew-Bose’s title of her essay collection, lifted from the her Diaries. And then it was that twitter account – Vita & Virgina Bot – serving tweet sized samples from the […]
Read more "On Youth, Woolf, and The Man Booker Prize"I didn’t realise until the last page was turned, but the second time I read Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life was exactly two years after the first. And two years ago, once finished with the tome of a novel, I swore I would never read it again. Despite loving it, it was too harrowing to read again. […]
Read more "On rereading A Little Life"Every year, usually when the days begin to get shorter, the nights longer, and the cold gives me an excuse to stay inside, I re-read the entire Harry Potter series. Some years I will binge read them all within two weeks, surfacing dazed and drunk on words (when this happens I mope around for a […]
Read more "Emotional Baggage: The Power of Re-reading"“It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times” begins Ali Smith’s prophetic newest novel Autumn. A grave echo of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Smith’s musing holds no humor. A novel set in a post-Brexit world, and read during the fateful 2016 presidential election, Autumn is the first in […]
Read more "Autumn: when politics permeate prose"