Michael Johnston's Blog, page 5

‘Nutshell’ by Ian McEwan

I have just finished the latest Ian McEwan novella, Nutshell [London: Jonathan Cape, 2016]. You can’t get past the epigraph with its quotation from Hamlet without realizing this is going to be a reworking, reinterpretation, McEwan take on the play. The wife is (Ger)Trudy and her lover, and brother of her husband, is Claude. The …

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‘Freedom’ by Jonathan Franzen

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen [London: Fourth Estate, 2011] richly repays all the time spent working through its 597 pages. On the evidence of this book (and taking previous convictions into account) Franzen has earned his place in the pantheon of Great American Novelists in the tradition of Updike, Steinbeck and Faulkner. The novel unfolds the …

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‘I’ll Sell You A Dog’ by Juan Pablo Villalobos

Here is another witty book from the sharp pen of Juan Pablo Villalobos; I’ll Sell You A Dog [High Wycombe: And Other Stories, 2016]. Last time, three years ago, the main ingredient was quesadillas, sometimes without cheese. This time it’s tacos but don’t ask what’s in them. Translator Rosalind Harvey does deliver the full flavour …

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‘Noonday’ by Pat Barker

Pat Barker should need no introduction and this is her latest novel: Noonday [London: Hamish Hamilton, 2015]. She became ‘famous’ with the Man Booker Prize winning The Ghost Road, culmination of the Regeneration trilogy that recounted the WW1 experiences of some of the actual War Poets, their real doctor Rivers, and others as they came …

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‘Slade House’ by David Mitchell

It’s hard to know quite what to make of Slade House, David Mitchell’s latest novel [London: Sceptre, 2015]. It seems to be not so much a sequel as a ‘parallelequel’ to The Bone Clocks and there is, in fact, one key character in common. The context is the battle between those who can sustain immortality …

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‘Paradise’ by A L Kennedy

Like two other novels I know called Paradise,* this one by A L Kennedy [London: Vintage 2005] uses its title ironically. The life described is no Paradise on earth nor even any purifying purgatory. In the end, there is no way back. On the way to perdition there is love, humour, coruscating wit but these …

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‘Wild’ by Mike Bartlett – at the Hampstead Theatre

The play running at Hampstead Theatre, Wild by Mike Bartlett [London: Nick Hern Books, 2016], directed by James Macdonald and designed by Miriam Beuther, deserves to go far. Ably and intelligently performed by Caoilfhionn Dunne, Jack Farthing and John Mackay, Wild presents us with that moment of post-cognitive dissonance in a whistleblower’s life. That moment …

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‘The Bone Clocks’ by David Mitchell

Once again, David Mitchell has sent a large bucket down into the deep well of his imagination and produced a masterwork: The Bone Clocks [London: Sceptre, 2014]. Mitchell enjoys the writer’s challenge of imagining the improbable, even the impossible, and writing such compelling prose that the reader is completely absorbed, suspends disbelief and revels in …

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‘Staunin Ma Lane’ by Brian Holton

Chinese verse translated into mellifluous Scots with an English crib is a personal triumph for the Sino-Scottish makar Brian Holton who is the creator of Staunin Ma Lane (Standing Alone) [Bristol: Shearsman Books, 2016].  An interest has to be declared.  I pushed my cousin Brian in his pram and it has clearly done him a …

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‘Day’ by A L Kennedy

With reading Day by A L Kennedy [London: Vintage, 2008] comes my dawning realisation that I have been missing something. As my hero Richard Ford says of her, “This woman is a profound writer.” And yet, despite being aware of her, and now and again catching her sparky contributions to radio programmes, to my chagrin, …

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