Book Review: Kazuo Ishiguro- A Pale View of Hills

This debut novel from Kazuo Ishiguro ruminates on the unreliability of memory, love, friendship and generational trauma. Skipping between past and present, Etsuko, the narrator, attempts to reconcile both as she weaves a complex story of life in the UK and her past in post-war Japan. But it seems that history casts a long shadow.Continue reading “Book Review: Kazuo Ishiguro- A Pale View of Hills”

The Arts Are Not A Luxury

I grew up in a small working- class rural town in Perthshire, Scotland. Nothing much happened there; we didn’t have much money and TV was our only dose of culture. In my house, books were shoved into cupboards, hidden away like skeletons, and theatre, with the exception of am- dram panto, wasn’t “for the likesContinue reading “The Arts Are Not A Luxury”

The Notorious JT

From the late nineties onwards, the blistering prose of JT Leroy captivated many, many readers all across the world. Like a cross between Kathy Acker and Dennis Cooper,his fiction resonated, weaving high art from low places. In person,too, Leroy bewitched the literary establishment, a taciturn, androgynous and socially awkward figure in shades, wig and hat.Continue reading “The Notorious JT”

The Company of Wolves (1984)

Angela Carter… So much to answer for. I first read The Bloody Chamber in 1987 as a young teen, exactly the right time to discover her voluptuous, gory, evocative prose. Her descriptions of sex, death, circuses, films, literature and the theatre were vivid and lucid, patently original. Without het, I question if Guillermo del Toro,Continue reading “The Company of Wolves (1984)”