The Guardian's Blog, page 192

Reader reviews roundup

Spy fiction from Javier Marías, horror from Sophie Hannah and a new collection of Irish short stories are among this week's picks

Kevin Barry, editor of Town and Country: New Irish Short Stories, believes that, in Ireland at least, this once-mighty form is pulsing with "great, mad and rude new energies". Rozz Lewis posted a suitably energetic response to the collection this week, guiding us through the "far from post-Celtic landscape".

From Nuala Ní Chonchúir's "Joyride to Jupiter", the story of a marriage tested by the worsening of a wife's dementia, to Colin Barrett's "The Clancy Kid" - which she intriguingly dubs as a "typically Irish bromance" - the strength of the book lies for her in its balance of timeless themes with an exploration of a fragile modern culture:

To represent a new Ireland, to try to capture what it is that is Irish now, Barry has presented an anthology that contains many new voices. The book is all the better for this; with these new voices, we get stories about a sometimes confused Ireland.

Elsewhere, broger posted a review of the first volume of Javier Marías's spy triology, Your Face Tomorrow - alongside a promise of more to come on his website. Describing him as an Eliot-like master of "incantatory rhythms and repetition", he explains the suspenseful - and sometimes frustrating - way we are introduced to the world of an Oxford don-turned-spy:

Throughout YFT his narrator insists that one should never 'tell' anyone anything, in a trilogy that's probably longer than War and Peace! There are, however, so many embedded anecdotes, mini-essays and narrative divagations and stories in the sequence that even Sterne would have been impressed. Nothing with Marías is as it seems.

stpauli had more joy unpicking Sophie Hannah's The Orphan Choir. Drawing a parallel to the psychological suspense of The Turn of the Screw, she praised the creation of the story's protagonist:

One of the great successes of The Orphan Choir is the deftly constructed narrative. It's Louise herself who tells the story, and it's often hard for the reader to gauge the state of Louise's mental health - just at is for her occasionally dismissive but ultimately confused husband Stuart.

That's all for this week. If you want to submit your own review of what you've been reading, head to our database and click on the button marked "Post your review". As ever, if your review has been mentioned, send an e-mail to claire.armitstead@guardian.co.uk and we'll send you a book from our cupboards.

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Do you want to talk about children's books?

It's not only kids who want to discuss children's books - so here's your chance to join a new book club, starting with RJ Palacio's award-winning novel, Wonder. The conversation starts here

Want to talk about children's books with us? Given the success of our children's books site we know that there is huge interest in books for young readers. Lots of adults want to talk about them too but, quite rightly, our children's site is a kids-only zone.

So we've teamed up with publisher Nosy Crow to take part in a new monthly children's book group, where adults will have a chance to discuss children's books, from picture books up to those aimed at 12-year-olds (no Young Adult fiction).

The first meeting will take place on Thursday 13 June at 6.30pm and I'll be at the physical event, at Nosy Crow's Crow's Nest in London, reporting back on the discussion in the comments thread below, and feeding in your comments to the group there. You can also get involved on twitter, and tweeted comments will be fed back into the discussion here and at the Crow's Nest.

This month's book is Wonder by RJ Palacio, winner of the Waterstones children's book prize in the 5-12 category. It's a moving, funny story of a 10-year-old boy with an extreme facial disfigurement and his first year at a regular school after years of home schooling. You can read Simon Mason's review of the book here, and an interview with the author here.

Nosy Crow have come up with some questions to get the discussion started:

1: How successfully do you think Palacio conveys different narrative viewpoints?

2: In 19th century children's books, disability is often (a) temporary, and (b) a means for redemption. How are changed attitudes to disability reflected in Wonder?

3: How does Palacio relate individuals' socio-economic circumstances to their inner characters?

4: Did you find Wonder to be sentimental or affirming?

5: This book ends with a prizegiving. Which characters do you think should have been awarded prizes?

If you have any other questions or talking-points about Wonder, please add them in the comments below for everyone to consider on Thursday. If you cannot be online at 6.30pm on Thursday, feel free to post your comments on the book below and kick off the discussion sooner.

Within a day or so of the event we'll publish a follow-up blog summarising the discussion and conclusions and setting the scene for the following month's book(s).

It's a bit of an experiment at this stage to see what works and what doesn't so please do let us know what you think, what sort of structure works best for you and the kinds of books you'd like to discuss in the future.

Children and teenagersMichelle Pauli
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PalFest: a book festival where authors listen

Other such occasions for authors are full of talk and chatter – here, we authors have reason to be a little more reticent

At PalFest, a literary festival in the West Bank, I knew we'd have to pass through Israeli checkpoints. What I hadn't expected was what the checkpoints would feel like. As foreigners we could have gone through on our bus. But PalFest wants writers to experience what it's like for ordinary Palestinians. And so it was that we found ourselves walking, single file, down narrow cages towards turnstiles.

In theory it might have been funny to watch writers struggling with their luggage – China Miéville trying a backward twist, or Tom Warner having to hoist his suitcase high above his head – but in reality it was humiliating. And that, I guess, is the point of the narrow corridor and the undersized turnstiles. The message – to us and the people who do this daily – is don't come back again.

As in most literary festivals we give readings – mine was in a beautiful garden in Ramallah accompanied by three musicians, whose haunting improvisations joined the pain of the old South Africa to the contemporary West Bank – and workshops. The rest of our time is spent not as per festival routine, in green rooms or shops, but listening to stories. And so it was that we visited Munther Fahmi's bookshop in east Jerusalem's American Colony Hotel.

Fahmi recently managed to overturn an Israeli court's judgment that he was not entitled to residency in Jerusalem. He's on probation now and unable to travel without permission, which came too late this year for the London Book Fair. "They're lousy losers," he says, "so they gave me a visa days after the fair had ended." Asked why, given all the difficulties he faces, he doesn't leave, he says simply: "I was born here. This is my country. You have to stay where you belong."

Fahmi's case was won with international help. Fatima Salim is not so lucky. Although her family have lived in the same house in the Sheikh Jarrah district of east Jerusalem for generations, a right-of-return law that applies only to Israeli citizens means she has been given an order to vacate. She has already lost the land that adjoined her property. Now she stands outside a house that is deteriorating because she is forbidden to fix it, and tells her story, her tears only leaking out at the end. All we writers we can do is be witness to this dignified old woman telling us that it might be better to be on the streets than to see her children persecuted because of where they live.

At most lit fests writers are there to be listened to. In this one, we are made silent by the pain of all we hear.

Middle East and North AfricaFestivalsPalestinian territoriesGillian Slovo
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Barbara Pym's centenary glass of blessings

Fans celebrate the novelist of vicarages and unrequited love with cupcakes, teabag rests - and paperback perfume

This weekend sees the centenary celebration of Barbara Pym, a writer compared in a recent article by Salon's Laura Miller to Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, EF Benson, Stella Gibbons and Agatha Christie's Jane Marple.

With the BBC for once seemingly letting a literary anniversary pass unnoticed, no national organisation is putting the bunting out for a novelist known for social comedies featuring village jumble sales, unrequited love and clergymen (averaging 5.76 vicars per novel, James Runcie – who made a Pym TV biopic starring Patricia Routledge – has calculated). And that's fitting too – being overlooked or turned down was a recurring experience for Pym, as for her heroines.

For 16 years amid the un-Pymian hullabaloo of the 60s and early 70s, she was out of fashion (as was Austen) and couldn't get published until Philip Larkin and others championed her; back in print in 1977, she made the Booker prize shortlist with Quartet in Autumn, three years before her death.

These stories of rejection and rediscovery will doubtless be retold at St Hilda's College, Oxford (an alma mater Pym shares with several authors, Wendy Cope and Val McDermid among them), as the Barbara Pym Society gathers. The highlight, tea and biscuits apart, looks to be a walk from the railway station around locations connected with Pym and Larkin. Only a cynic would suggest it might be called off if there's a risk of sunshine.

At a livelier event in March at Harvard, her American fans enjoyed a church service, singing the society song, "Unsuitable Things" (to the tune of "My Favourite Things"), papers including one on food in Pym, and champagne and cupcakes at their AGM.

In the US – where a perfume called Paperback, billed as smelling like "a dusty old copy of a Barbara Pym novel", is available – the BPS's US arm seems keener on "doing a Jane Austen" on her, judging by the mugs, tea-towels and other merchandising on its website. Who wouldn't want a Barbara Pym "tea-bag rest", a snip at $5?

FictionJane AustenAnthony TrollopeAgatha ChristieVal McDermidWendy CopePhilip LarkinJohn Dugdale
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Poetry is not drowning, but swimming into new territory

News of plummeting sales do not, as some fear, indicate a dying art. In fact, the genre is adapting well to a new publishing age

On Wednesday evening, a collection of poetry in support of the jailed Russian punk rock group Pussy Riot won the award for Best Poetry Anthology in the 2013 Saboteur awards for indie poetry.

Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot features the work of 110 poets and two dozen translators and began with a Facebook appeal by its editors Mark Burnhope and Sarah Crewe for poems in support of the women, in the run-up to their appeal hearing in October 2012. Ali Smith, Deborah Levy, Phill Jupitus and John Kinsella are among the contributors to the collection, which was published as an ebook in partnership with English PEN, and is now available in print-on-demand.

It beat four other anthologies to the award: The Centrifugal Eye's Fifth Anniversary Anthology (edited by EA Hanninen), Rhyming Thunder – the Alternative Book of Young Poets (Burning Eye), Sculpted: Poetry of the North West (Salt, edited by L Holland and A Topping) and Adventures in Form (Penned in the Margins, ed. Tom Chivers).

It's notable that one of the contenders, Salt, recently announced that they are abandoning the single-author collection as being financially unsustainable. And indeed, hardly a week goes by without someone assuring us that poetry is dying. Given the decline in sales that they have experienced, with a 50% drop over the last five years, half of which happened in the last 12 months, Salt's decision is perfectly reasonable. No commercial press can possibly support those numbers without looking to change their business model.

The stark truth is that poetry publishing is not going to be particularly commercially viable, given that the total value of UK poetry sales has gone from £8.4m in 2009 to £6.7m last year. Mind you, Salt seems to have been particularly severely affected if you compare its fall of 25% last year to the overall 15.9% drop. In one sense, it could be argued that Salt's decision is good news for Faber, Bloodaxe, Carcanet, Shearsman and all those Saboteur shortlisted indies, since it means that there are fewer big fish swimming round a shrinking pool.

However, it would be a serious error to equate the demise of a single publisher with the overall state of health of poetry. Even Salt director Chris Hamilton-Emery has noted the "massive increase in the number of poetry publications coming out", and he's right. Jim Bennet's extremely useful Poetry Kit website lists more than 400 UK poetry publishers, and while the list is broad (it includes Faber) and perhaps a bit out of date (it also includes Salt) it shows the range of publishers around. As for the US, a quick look at the SPD site indicates that the situation there isn't much different.

Most of the smaller presses are amateur, in the strict sense of the word. They are often run by poets, for poets, and on a shoestring budget with the noble, and possibly unattainable, financial aim of breaking even. Frequently their publications stretch the definition of "book" to the limit, with gatefold pamphlets, tiny chapbooks, CDs, poster poems and even poems folded into matchboxes featuring on their lists. The publishers generally do the typesetting, design and sewing themselves. These presses belong to a DIY tradition that runs back through the Gestetner and Xerox revolution if the 60s and 70s back to William Blake and earlier.

And these are just the traditional print publishers. There are, according to the Southbank Centre Poetry Library, "hundreds of thousands" of dedicated poetry websites out there, presenting poems and poets through the full range of digital media, including video, audio, animated text, ebooks and interactive hypertext.

The Poetry Kit also advertises regular reading events; there are more than 250 open mic events listed in the UK alone, not counting festivals and one-off readings. For many younger poets, open mics and poetry slams represent their first interaction with an audience – their first "publication". In fact, some on both sides of the spoken word/print divide see the oral poetry movement as one of the biggest threats to print publication. After all, who needs to have a book out when you can perform to enthusiastic live audiences every week of the year? It's enough to dismay the lovers of the printed artefact.

I might have felt that way myself, but the experience of reviewing Rhyming Thunder, an anthology of slam and performance poetry from Burning Eye, one publisher which hasn't made it on to the Poetry Kit list yet, changed my mind. Here are a loose group of young poetry performers who are clearly pleased to find themselves captured in the pages of a "real" book. Indeed, some of them even have single-author collections out. A number also have their own web presences. At what might be considered the other end of the spectrum, Robert Pinsky announced just the other day that he finally has a website of his own. On Twitter.

So, where some see poetry as a dying art, I see it as an early and enthusiastic adopter of new technologies, partly because it has to be. Why? Well, if selling what you're making isn't going to make anyone rich, but you want to share it with those people who are interested, then you have to work out the cheapest way to do so. And right now it looks like that way is a mix of online, performance and print, with each supporting the other in a new model of publishing, one in which the printed collection is no longer the only accepted mode of publishing but remains a key part of the package. And given the apparent reluctance of most bookshops to stock verse, they'll be sold mainly online and at events. It may not be big business, but that's not what it's setting out to be.

In 1923, Virginia Woolf hand-set the type for the Hogarth Press edition of Eliot's The Waste Land. The edition was limited to 470 copies and I doubt it made much money, almost certainly not enough to pay for the time and effort invested in it. It was reviewed in the Manchester Guardian on 31 October that same year, a review that ends with the words "so much waste paper". The reviewer, Charles Powell, probably thought that Eliot's "mad medley" represented the death of poetry. But poetry's a resilient beast and current reports of its impending demise will, I'm sure, prove to be somewhat exaggerated.

PoetryEbooksPussy RiotBilly Mills
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Tips, links and suggestions: What are you reading today?

The space to talk about the books you are reading, and find out which ones we are reviewing

Good day all. On the last blog there was the usual an array of interesting, informative and funny conversations spanning everything from bad writers who, like X Factor contestants, don't know they aren't great at writing, to GetOverIt99's 'stream of consciousness about To The Lighthouse. Thanks to everyone who joined in.

Each week or so I start a new TLS thread, but I'm wondering, reading back through these conversations, if it's time we changed the TLS format a little bit. We could for example, keep the thread open for a month rather than a week - but might this make conversations too difficult to follow? Would you like more links from the books desk perhaps, or fewer words from us; do you need me to kick it off or would you like to take it in turns to write the opener?

Also, do you find the review list interesting or useful? Please give me your thoughts, you have after all, shaped this space and I wouldn't want to change it if you are happy with it's current format.

Talking of review lists, here's this week's:

Non fiction

• Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature by Jorge Luis Borges
• Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet by Finn Brunton
• The Burning Question by Mike Berners-Lee and Duncan Clark
• Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation by Judith Mackrell
• The Sea Inside by Philip Hoare
• Consolations of the Forest by Sylvain Tesson
• Italo Calvino Letters, 1941-1985

Fiction

• Transatlantic by Colum McCann
• Burnt Island by Alice Thompson
• Maya's Notebook by Isabel Allende
• Asunder by Chloe Aridijs
• The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook
• Altai by Wu Ming

Children's

• Urgle by Meaghan McIsaac

Hannah FreemanGuardian readers
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George RR Martin fans can expect more Ice and Fire in 2014

Good news for those of us impatient for more from the Game of Thrones author: he's busy compiling a companion 'GRRM-arillion'

News from the blogosphere for all you fellow George RR Martin fans out there - the author has been hammering out the pages of his companion to the Song of Ice and Fire series. According to a blogger at a recent convention attended by Martin, "he was supposed to write 50,000 words – he wrote 250,000", and "the premise of the [World of Ice and Fire] book is that it is a copy of a tome presented to [the character Robert Baratheon] just after the Rebellion".

I thought I'd check the details with Martin's publisher HarperCollins, and they tell me that actually, "the book's only likely to be around 100,000 words in length". Still sounds like fun, though, and as a Tolkien fan, and one who has even gone so far as to read some of The Silmarillion, I'm particularly pleased that, according to the blogger, the extra words "have been put in a file for a project they are now calling the 'GRRM-arillion'. ".

Martin himself has described the book as "the concordance … a compendium of the history and legends of the world of Westeros. A coffee table book, lots of gorgeous art from such talents as Ted Nasmith, Justin Sweet, and others", and said last summer that he was "making good progress on this one of late, lots of great historical stuff that I think my readers will enjoy. Never-before revealed details of Aegon's Conquest, the War With the Faith, The Dance of the Dragons, the Paramours of Aegon the Unworthy, etc."

His co-author Elio M García, meanwhile, of the fan site Westeros, said earlier this month that the compendium "won't be out this year … but that's because it's becoming rather cooler. More pages, more new history and details, more art. Like the story of the fall of the Tarbecks and the Reynes, the surprising person from whom the Lannisters are descended, more history of the Vale and the arrival of the Andals, and a good deal more. We're working quick as we can, but there's also more art to commission and that means it'd be safest to aim for next year."

The official line from Martin's publisher Jane Johnson is that The World of Ice and Fire will be out in spring 2014 – a bit of a delay, but "more to do with illustrative complications and global publishing schedules than the writing, and I certainly wouldn't want fans getting the impression that George is working on [it] at the expense of The Winds of Winter" – the next novel in the series and the book we're really all desperate for.

So there's a while to wait. In the meantime, I will comfort myself with a reread of The Winds of Winter chapter Martin provided online earlier this year. Winter is definitely coming - we just have to be patient.

George RR MartinFantasyFictionAlison Flood
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Anti-superhero Zenith returns to print

After protracted legal wrangles, Grant Morrison's famously shallow fictional pin-up will soon be available again - at a price

It has just been announced that after being stuck in legal limbo for more than two decades, Grant Morrison's anti-superhero Zenith is finally staging a comeback in a hard-fought resurrection worthy of any comics storyline.

In December, the publishing company Rebellion, which owns British comic 2000AD in which the character first appeared in 1987, will bring out a limited edition 480-page hardback collecting the complete series and retailing at a sobering £100.

Zenith has achieved cult status not only for it being one of the classic early works of Glasgow-born Morrison – whose successes include revamps of long-standing characters such as Superman and Batman as well as his own creations, including The Invisibles – but for the legal row that has kept it out of print for almost a quarter of a century.

Since the series ended its run in the weekly comic and was collected into five trade paperbacks between 1988 and 1990, the character has been involved in a tug of war over ownership – Morrison says he and artist Steve Yeowell retained the rights to the work, while Rebellion says it was always work-for-hire, and thus owned by 2000AD.

Announcing the plans for the hardback, Rebellion said: "Both Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell have been informed of the exciting plans." Rebellion has taken legal advice and are happy that they have full ownership of the Zenith strips, and therefore the right to reprint them – though it appears they are going ahead without Morrison's blessing.

The original 2000AD issues are hard to find and the five collected softback albums from the late 80s change hands on eBay for up to £100 each.

Zenith appeared in the same era as gritty, adult superhero tales such as Alan Moore and David Gibbons' Watchmen and Frank Miller's Dark Knight. In contrast, he was handsome, achingly cool and superpowered – but chose not to fight crime, instead using his abilities to become a celebrity and pop star. In his book Supergods, Morrison writes: "Zenith was intended to be as dumb, sexy, and disposable as an 80s pop single; Alan Moore remixed by Stock Aitken and Waterman."

The clean lines of Yeowell – who partnered Morrison on other projects, including The Invisibles and Sebastian O – gave suitably 80s monochrome life to Zenith, who sported a Morrissey quiff and leather jacket.

In an interview with former 2000AD editor David Bishop in 2007, Morrison said: "[Zenith] was very much a reaction against torment superheroes. Dark Knight is a brilliant piece of Reagan-era fiction and Watchmen is very, very clever in its architecture, but both books felt pompous and concept album-y to me as a young man in the 80s. I wanted to do something a little less self conscious perhaps, or to align myself with a different current of thinking … I decided to make it about the superficial things I was into at the time: clothes, records, TV shows. Instead of creating an aspirational superhero, I gave Zenith all of my worst, most venal traits. I wanted to create a postcard from the 80s."

Not that the story was as shallow as Zenith – it was a raw, first outing for a lot of what would become recurring Morrison themes, including malign pan-dimensional entities, morally ambiguous superhumans, and familiar faces from real-life popular culture (one character in Zenith bears more than a passing resemblance to Richard Branson).

Mike Molcher at Rebellion said in the announcement: "Zenith heralded the arrival of a talent who has since gone on to become one of the biggest names in in comic books. A very cynical British take on superheroes, Zenith demonstrates [Morrison's] remarkable depth and maturity as a writer. Yeowell's striking black and white artwork gave a the strip a vitality and rawness that still shines through today."

The collection will also include a Zenith strip by Kick-Ass writer Mark Millar which appeared in a 2000AD winter special in 1990. Morrison and Millar were previously good friends and writing partners, but in a 2011 interview Morrison said of their relationship: "There's not good feeling between myself and Mark for many reasons."

The Zenith hardback will be published on December 1 and available to pre-order from 2000AD from July 1, though will be limited to 1,000 copies. Whether it will be followed by a mass-market and more affordable edition, Rebellion has not said.

Comics and graphic novelsPublishingDavid Barnett
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Rereading Stephen King, chapter 21: It

At 1,400 pages, this is a massive novel – and a huge achievement by a writer showing off all of his storytelling skills

It is one of King's most enduring novels; it's crossed over from just being read by his fans, and become a part of a wider cultural consciousness. There's something universal about it; something that feels like a summation of King's previous work in the horror genre. I've mentioned, in the past, the slur that King created his novels by simply taking things with the potential to be creepy – empty hotels, dogs, disease – and ramping up the horror. For his detractors, It is possibly the most obvious example. But his use of classic horror tropes here was wholly intentional; and, by using them, he created what is likely his scariest novel in the process.

It is intimidatingly huge. Fourteen hundred pages long in my printing (the only bigger novel I own is Infinite Jest), and famously weighing nigh-on four pounds, it's a challenge to hold, let alone read. I don't recall a huge amount about the physical experience of reading most novels. The book is all, for the most part. But I remember reading It in the summer. It is, as has been mentioned before on this very site, a summer novel. I spent a week of the school holidays in Derry, King's fictional Maine town, with my fictional friends in the novel's so-called Losers' Club, during the long summer of 1958. I knew them all: Bill, Bev, Richie, Ben, Mike, Stan and Eddie. We were all roughly the same age, we were all misfits, and all that any of us wanted was to stop being afraid. I had things going on in my own life that I couldn't deal with; their problems were bigger than mine, but I felt that they would have understood me regardless. They would have accepted me.

And then they grew up, and I got to see where they landed. The book is essentially two novels, featuring the same characters during different parts of their lives – teenagers in 1958, and adults in 1985 – as they attempt to deal with their hopes and fears; and with the titular menace. The monsterpresents itself as that which you are most afraid of; it finds your fears, and feasts on them. It's a creature beyond any that King had unleashed before that point, because it represented every evil: all childhood fears manifested.

Of course, the most famous and lasting of those manifestations is Pennywise, the clown that – thanks, in no small part, to Tim Curry's performance in the surprisingly enduring TV movie adaptation – has come to be a face of the novel itself. I'd never been scared of clowns, but something about Pennywise taught me how to be. As the novel goes on, we see it manifest as vampires, werewolves, zombies, witches, a mummy, all classic horror icons; but Pennywise is the one that endures, the creation that is wholly King's. In Time magazine, around the book's release, King stated that his thought had been to "bring on all the monsters one last time … and call it It" . He wanted to sum up all of childhood in those fears, and then cast those fears off; to write a novel about the loss of childhood innocence. Pennywise – an image associated with laughter and innocent joy – was his trump card. Of course, Pennywise isn't the novel's biggest terror. The most prominent notions of fear in the novel come from the Losers' Club themselves: their home lives, the things that have made them pariahs.

I can't read It for pure pleasure now, not really. I'm a different reader, and there are things that I would critique, if I had to: common complaints, about how long the novel is; or about questionable scenes concerning childhood sexuality that shocked me when I was a kid. (One particular scene involving the young Losers' Club taking part in what amounts to an orgy shocks me to this day.)

Looking at it as a writer, it's incredible: a structural marvel, an author at the height of his powers, and he's showing off. Juggling dual narratives, historical interludes, an astonishing number of characters, King somehow makes it all seem effortless. It wasn't, of course – at the end of the novel we are told that it took him four years to write – but it seems to emerged from his imagination fully formed. It's perhaps the best example of King's astonishing skill with focalisation, as well, moving between different character viewpoints. Even after multiple reads over the course of my life – five? six? I can't say for sure – it still wows me.

Connections

This novel sits in the middle of much of King's work: in Derry, the fictional town thatis the setting for so many stories; in The Shining's Dick Halloran, saving Mike Hanlon in the Black Spot fire; in the links with the Dark Tower, especially Stuttering Bill and the Turtle (long story for another time); in Mike Hanlon, popping up in Insomnia; in the mentions of the towns from Children Of The Corn. And, most powerful of all, in 11/22/63: when the time-travelling main character visits Derry and meets Bev and Richie. I felt as he did; travelling back to somewhere that I knew, to meet people that I knew from another time.

There's something else that I think is interesting. King's eldest son, Joe Hill (one of the three kids that It was dedicated to) has recently published an excellent and hugely unsettling novel called NOS-4R2. Just as It was a culmination of King's work in the horror genre, Hill has described NOS-4R2 as his "senior PhD thesis on horror". There's a moment in the book where a map is shown of worlds that we cannot visit through normal means. One of them is Pennywise's Circus. Maybe everything is just on the path of a beam …

Stephen KingHorrorFictionJames Smythe
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Choose a DH Lawrence novel for the reading group

June's author will be a writer who divides opinion pretty fiercely. Which book should we pick to make our assessment?

It is 100 years this week since Sons and Lovers was first published, as Blake Morrison has just reminded us in an excellent essay, which makes for a very appropriate moment to consider his work in the reading group.

That piece starts with DH Lawrence's review of his own book: "I tell you I've written a great book," DH Lawrence informed his publisher Edward Garnett, after sending him the manuscript of Sons and Lovers in November 1912. "Read my novel – it's a great novel."

Blake Morrison agrees that its great. FR Leavis did too and proved it by including the book in The Great Tradition. Morrison also gives us Philip Larkin's opinion: "Cock me! Nearly every page of it is absolutely perfect."

Contemporary reviewers liked it too. Today we like to view Lawrence battling against phalanxes of prudes, but most of the contemporary notices I've sniffed out are very favourable. Even the old Gray Lady, The New York Times, described it as a book of "rare excellence".

But today? As Morrison says, Lawrence's reputation is at a low at the moment – he just lays it on too thick for modern tastes. It even seems like years since one of his works was adapted for film or TV.

I'm afraid I'm among the doubters. After reading Morrison's superb essay, I'm prepared to give him another shot. But I have to admit that the last time I tried to read DH Lawrence I found him ridiculous. This is an author who reports speech using the words "he cried" or "he half-shouted" more often than "he said". Not to mention a terrible fondness for capitals and EMOTIONAL emphasis. But perhaps I'll understand more this time around. Perhaps I won't – but it's certainly worth a shot, and I hope you'll join me. The only question is which book we should choose. The natural choice, it being 100 years old and all, is Sons and Lovers, but since Lawrence is a writer who excites such passion, and since the reading group is a (mainly!) democratic forum, I thought we should have it out in the comments and submit Lawrence's substantial bibliography to the vote. Simply name the book you'd like to read in the comments below and we'll count them up and see where we are this time next week …

DH LawrenceFictionLiterary criticismSam Jordison
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