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Granta: The Magazine of New Writing #119
Granta 119: Britain
It is a nation defined by tradition and built on expansion. Now it has more languages spoken within its capital than any other city in the world. What are the stories Britain is telling about itself today?
256 pages, Paperback
First published May 10, 2012
13 people are currently reading
118 people want to read
About the author
John Freeman
55 books286 followersNote: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
John Freeman is an award-winning writer and book critic who has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. Freeman won the 2007 James Patterson Pageturner Award for his work as the president of the National Book Critics Circle, and was the editor of Granta from 2009 to 2013. He lives in New York City, where he teaches at NYU and edits a new literary biannual called Freeman's.
John Freeman is an award-winning writer and book critic who has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. Freeman won the 2007 James Patterson Pageturner Award for his work as the president of the National Book Critics Circle, and was the editor of Granta from 2009 to 2013. He lives in New York City, where he teaches at NYU and edits a new literary biannual called Freeman's.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
August 24, 2015
It was fitting that this was the very first Granta issue to arrive at my door after I subscribed. Britain, it said. What, no longer Great, I thought.
When I first moved to the UK, I didn’t think I would stay here very long. I had 400 pounds to my name and my head was full of nonsense. I had acted on many half-cooked ideas before and somewhat expected this to be just another one of the kind. And yet, I weirdly found home here. I now have been here for almost seven years and it was a belated coming of age experience. A good 40% of who I am now has been moulded by this country. So even though I still rebel against the separate water taps, I will never put milk in my tea, or choose Sunday roast if there is anything else less … beige available, I will be applying for my Britihs passport soon (that is as soon as I manage to save up 800 pounds, as I’m somehow as poor again as I was when I first arrived). As much as it smells of old age I've resigned myself to the notion that I will never want to live aywhere else for good. (Well, maybe Canada).
This Granta issue is as rich and diverse as the country itself. However, you won’t find any of the usual tropes here - royalty, upper class, dinner parties and all that. And I almost didn’t notice - it's not part of my Britain either.
I know that my view of the UK is very London-centric and London is a world unto itself, separate from the rest of the country, so it was very interesting to see all those different facets of my adopted country, that I don’t normally get to see.
Gary Younge’s fascinating description of growing up in Stevenage showed me that it wasn’t only behind the Iron Curtain where people got enamoured with the idea of an urban utopia. I plan on learning more about the post-war Britian. This opening piece was probably the one that stayed most true to the theme of exploring ‘Britishness’.
Ross Raisin wrote an unnerving story of a young footballer and I should probably check out his book in hope of finding more of those violent emotions.
My favourite piece from the collection is Robert Macfarlane’s 'Silt'. I had heard about him before and couldn’t quite understand why people would buy books describing his walks in the fairly monotonous British countryside. Now I understand. This was bewitching.
Of course, there is also an excerpt from my favourite writer’s book titled here ‘The Celt’ (the actual title of the book is The Dream of the Celt). I’m not sure who edited this excerpt but they did not do a good job. They literally cut out all the good bits, robbing the piece of its emotion and making it sound amateurish. You don’t do that Mario Vargas Llosa.
Another two writers I must definitely check out after reading their stories are Tania James and Cynan Jones.
The biggest surprise was Mark Haddon, whom I didn’t expect to ever enjoy after the disaster that was 'A Spot Of Bother'. However, it turns out that he is an excellent writer when he doesn’t try to be funny.
Sam Byers, on the other hand, does the funny-sad exceptionally well and I will be checking out his book Idiopathy, whose excerpt was the only fictional piece in the collection which featured a woman as the main character.
There was quite a lot of stories with adolescent boys and a coming of age theme. Is it that Britian in its new post-imperial form is still in the early adolescent stage, trying to ‘grow into itself’ (to borrow from the title of Raisin’s story)?
The odd one out in the collection was a piece about Belarus Free Theatre, which seemed to have nothing to do with the UK at first, but a little googling told me that the people behind Belarus Free Theatre applied for asylum in the UK and are now performing in London (check them out here: http://www.belarusfreetheatre.com/)
I will leave it for someone to review the fantastic illustrations and photos in this issue; Varoom Magazine did it very well: http://www.varoom-mag.com/?p=1847
When I first moved to the UK, I didn’t think I would stay here very long. I had 400 pounds to my name and my head was full of nonsense. I had acted on many half-cooked ideas before and somewhat expected this to be just another one of the kind. And yet, I weirdly found home here. I now have been here for almost seven years and it was a belated coming of age experience. A good 40% of who I am now has been moulded by this country. So even though I still rebel against the separate water taps, I will never put milk in my tea, or choose Sunday roast if there is anything else less … beige available, I will be applying for my Britihs passport soon (that is as soon as I manage to save up 800 pounds, as I’m somehow as poor again as I was when I first arrived). As much as it smells of old age I've resigned myself to the notion that I will never want to live aywhere else for good. (Well, maybe Canada).
This Granta issue is as rich and diverse as the country itself. However, you won’t find any of the usual tropes here - royalty, upper class, dinner parties and all that. And I almost didn’t notice - it's not part of my Britain either.
I know that my view of the UK is very London-centric and London is a world unto itself, separate from the rest of the country, so it was very interesting to see all those different facets of my adopted country, that I don’t normally get to see.
Gary Younge’s fascinating description of growing up in Stevenage showed me that it wasn’t only behind the Iron Curtain where people got enamoured with the idea of an urban utopia. I plan on learning more about the post-war Britian. This opening piece was probably the one that stayed most true to the theme of exploring ‘Britishness’.
Ross Raisin wrote an unnerving story of a young footballer and I should probably check out his book in hope of finding more of those violent emotions.
My favourite piece from the collection is Robert Macfarlane’s 'Silt'. I had heard about him before and couldn’t quite understand why people would buy books describing his walks in the fairly monotonous British countryside. Now I understand. This was bewitching.
Of course, there is also an excerpt from my favourite writer’s book titled here ‘The Celt’ (the actual title of the book is The Dream of the Celt). I’m not sure who edited this excerpt but they did not do a good job. They literally cut out all the good bits, robbing the piece of its emotion and making it sound amateurish. You don’t do that Mario Vargas Llosa.
Another two writers I must definitely check out after reading their stories are Tania James and Cynan Jones.
The biggest surprise was Mark Haddon, whom I didn’t expect to ever enjoy after the disaster that was 'A Spot Of Bother'. However, it turns out that he is an excellent writer when he doesn’t try to be funny.
Sam Byers, on the other hand, does the funny-sad exceptionally well and I will be checking out his book Idiopathy, whose excerpt was the only fictional piece in the collection which featured a woman as the main character.
There was quite a lot of stories with adolescent boys and a coming of age theme. Is it that Britian in its new post-imperial form is still in the early adolescent stage, trying to ‘grow into itself’ (to borrow from the title of Raisin’s story)?
The odd one out in the collection was a piece about Belarus Free Theatre, which seemed to have nothing to do with the UK at first, but a little googling told me that the people behind Belarus Free Theatre applied for asylum in the UK and are now performing in London (check them out here: http://www.belarusfreetheatre.com/)
I will leave it for someone to review the fantastic illustrations and photos in this issue; Varoom Magazine did it very well: http://www.varoom-mag.com/?p=1847
June 17, 2012
One of the Grantas that makes the subscription worthwhile. Adam Foulds proves that he can be earthy and up to the minute, and Jon McGregor is gentle, quiet and devastating. Look out for Andrea Stuart's Sugar in the Blood, nothing to do with diabetes, and Sam Byers. Oh, and Mark Haddon's piece was harrowing, breathtaking, phew.
December 19, 2020
This special British edition of Granta came out in 2012, the year of the London Olympics, when we were proud of being British, before we became a backward, insular suicide pact of bitterness, or, at least, when the racist inequalities and arrogance were temporarily hidden. It’s an interesting historical artefact on that basis. It’s interesting how hard this selection of fiction, art and poetry tries to display the hardships below the Cool Britannia glitz.
There’s a piece about sugar, Barbados and the movements of people between there and the UK, which seems sharply current in light of Black Lives Matter. So does Ross Raisin’s story of the young gay footballer. This went on to be developed into The Natural. Many of the other fiction pieces (like Jon MacGregor’s) were developed into later novels, or (like Jim Crace’s) are extracts of novels. It would have been nice if there had been some more true short stories among the fiction.
The pictures are an under explained jumble all heaped together. The CNF is good and varied — visiting Stevenage and the East Anglian coast as well as Barbados. The poems didn’t grab me — all a bit vague and untethered. Strangely they are all be men. In fact, it’s rather a male-heavy edition. Only three female writers, and one of them is writing about wrestlers and another about Orange bands.
The Mario Vargas Llosa piece about Casement is an unexpected treat. Jones’ The Dig was unpleasant but much more interesting than I’d anticipated. Mark Haddon’s The Gun was earthier than I’m used to from him but, of course, engagingly and well written. I’m a bit bored of unemployed druggy young single people as protagonists (as in Foulds’ story), but everyone else was unexpected and interesting (apart from Crace’s peasants).
Raisin’s was the best piece, though The Natural is even better. Overall the writing was more consistently high quality and the subjects more varied and interesting than in most of the Grantas I’ve read from more recently.
There’s a piece about sugar, Barbados and the movements of people between there and the UK, which seems sharply current in light of Black Lives Matter. So does Ross Raisin’s story of the young gay footballer. This went on to be developed into The Natural. Many of the other fiction pieces (like Jon MacGregor’s) were developed into later novels, or (like Jim Crace’s) are extracts of novels. It would have been nice if there had been some more true short stories among the fiction.
The pictures are an under explained jumble all heaped together. The CNF is good and varied — visiting Stevenage and the East Anglian coast as well as Barbados. The poems didn’t grab me — all a bit vague and untethered. Strangely they are all be men. In fact, it’s rather a male-heavy edition. Only three female writers, and one of them is writing about wrestlers and another about Orange bands.
The Mario Vargas Llosa piece about Casement is an unexpected treat. Jones’ The Dig was unpleasant but much more interesting than I’d anticipated. Mark Haddon’s The Gun was earthier than I’m used to from him but, of course, engagingly and well written. I’m a bit bored of unemployed druggy young single people as protagonists (as in Foulds’ story), but everyone else was unexpected and interesting (apart from Crace’s peasants).
Raisin’s was the best piece, though The Natural is even better. Overall the writing was more consistently high quality and the subjects more varied and interesting than in most of the Grantas I’ve read from more recently.
June 25, 2025
A very mixed bag. One or two decent stories mixed in with a bunch of contemporary junk.
July 14, 2012
This week’s headline? Bloody Broken English
Why this book? teacup on cover
Which book format? pre-ordered it online
Primary reading environment? took it places
Any preconceived notions? suspiciously high-brow literature
Identify most with? “some other Katherine”
Three little words? “another bleating windpipe”
Goes well with? “slight animal sourness”
Recommend this to? “girl named Clover”
None of these stories in particular got to me, although I enjoyed reading them. They were all overshadowed by the story from The New Yorker I read mid-week. For some reason, An Abduction , which is also set in Britain, became intertwined with the stories I was reading in Granta, and I kept trying to flip back to the story about the freckled girl who meets up with some Oxbridge boys.
On Twitter, I compared that story to both Joyce Carol Oates’s creepy abduction story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been – which I never understood, though it haunted me through my senior year of college – and the Carey Milligan vehicle An Education.
If I can use Miss Milligan as a springboard into a broader discussion about Britain, it was really the 2010 film Never Let Me Go, which I also encountered this week, that caused a sea change in my thinking about Britain. If An Abduction and An Education are about the changes in Britain in the 60s, then what about the dystopian parallel universe depicted in Never Let Me Go?
I haven’t read the book Never Let Me Go, because I honestly don’t think I could handle it, and I only got the courage to finally sit down and watch the movie because I was reading this “magazine of new writing” about Britain.
It is a magazine, yes, but it also has an ISBN so I’m including it here on Goodreads, although I may remove this review later because trying to discuss a bunch of short stories and essays by several different authors is having a very scattered result – even if they are united by a singular theme.
I suppose this “book” is to thank for a sort of reimagining of Britain I experienced over the past week.
Other cultural accompaniments: An Abduction by Tessa Hadley in July 9, 2012 The New Yorker, Never Let Me Go (2010), One Day (2011), An Education (2009), Across the Universe (2007), http://www.themillions.com/2012/07/ex....
Grade: B+
I leave you with this: Do you think The New Yorker deliberately ran a short story set in Britain to compete, match-up, or dovetail with the upcoming release of this edition of Granta?
May 26, 2012
This was pretty great. Stevenage by Gary Younge and Sugar in the Blood by Andrea Stuart are two reports from little acknowledged histories of British citizens. Silt by Robert Macfarlane is about a English geographical oddity. The Celt by Marion Vargas Llosa was a really good story iconoclasm and allegiances even though it did seem interminable (as I always find MVL's stories). Of the poems, Jamie McKendrick's Cofiwch Dryweryn, recalls a tragedy, not, perhaps, in the action itself ,but in the way it was carried out. Robin Robertson's 1964 has graceful lines.
My two favorite pieces were Sam Byers' Some Other Katherine which was an acerbic, funny, despairing, take on sex and singlehood. and Mark Haddon's The Gun which relates an ordinary, almost haphazard, youthful adventure so tautly
it was difficult not to feel that I, as the reader, wasn't actually a part of it or, otherwise, that I hadn't experienced similar circumstances in my own childhood.
Jon McGregor's Clough (The definition is "a gorge or narrow ravine") Is about a estranged friends and a community reconnecting in the search for a lost child. Having just read Castle Freeman's Round Mountain, it was interesting to compare the stories.
May 18, 2019
Terrific collection.
January 3, 2026
read ages ago but still think semi frequently about gary younge on stevenage
March 18, 2017
3.5 stars
November 10, 2020
Nicely varied anthology mixing short stories, memoir and extracts from wider fiction. "Silt" - a description of a walk across a mud flat, was amazing, the kind of story that immediately makes you want to go outside and try and see the world with those kind of eyes. Also "The Gun", which, while not my kind of childhood thank god, was a wonderful
I can't remember why I had this issue of Granta. I remember picking one up in the 90's once and thinking it was pretentious tosh, one of the reasons I avoided contemporary literature for so long. I actually thought after reading this that I wouldn't mind a subscription.
I can't remember why I had this issue of Granta. I remember picking one up in the 90's once and thinking it was pretentious tosh, one of the reasons I avoided contemporary literature for so long. I actually thought after reading this that I wouldn't mind a subscription.
June 7, 2012
A nice little electric collection. It's super to get an extract from the Mario Vargas Llosa book on Roger Casement (which I definitely won't be reading). The biographical, reflective essay on Stevenage made the work with buying in its now right. There's lots of other highlights - an excellent Simon Armitage poem, an unusually moving story by Rachel Seiffert and some excellent photography. There is an edge to this - this is reflective of England today. There's a darkness and an earthiness to several of these contributions that some will find off-putting.
June 12, 2012
A broken tea cup on the cover - fine china cracked, a golden handle sideways on the table. The image captures this edition of Granta. The poems, pictures, stories and non-fiction cover a wide range. I especially liked "Silt" and the rather disturbing section of photographs called "Home." Britain has long been torn by sectarian violence, the consequences of colonialism, increasing racial and ethnic diversity, the "Troubles" - and so much more.
So much reminiscent of American "troubles." Worth the read.
So much reminiscent of American "troubles." Worth the read.
November 17, 2013
Sometime earlier this year I subscribed to Granta for four issues just to see if it was worth it. The answer was, not really. This was the third issue I received and so far all three have been similarly disappointing, with a lot of unmemorable pieces. Of course in each there are one or two that stand out, but even those don't meet the mark set by the fantastic short story collections I've read this year, like Junot Diaz's or George Saunders's. Best to stick to my usual mode of choosing books - via favourable reviews from critics and Goodreads, I think.
May 27, 2012
I'm a new subscriber to this magazine (though its more of a book produced periodically, given the quality of publishing), and its really good.
No other issues to compare it with, and the short fiction was good, but the nonfiction was surprisingly solid: Gary Younge's Stevenage original take on identity in a new town was a good start to the mag, but I'd definitely read Silt again, walking an offshore path at low tide.
really looking forward to the next issue.
No other issues to compare it with, and the short fiction was good, but the nonfiction was surprisingly solid: Gary Younge's Stevenage original take on identity in a new town was a good start to the mag, but I'd definitely read Silt again, walking an offshore path at low tide.
really looking forward to the next issue.
August 16, 2012
The cover picture represents the true title of this collection of stories from the British Empire, Broken Britain. This is a very dark collection of the other side of life, not the Jubilee or the Olympics but the down and out and disenfranchised, often violent and full of despair and hopelessness. Yet, somehow, I still enjoyed most of them, very good writing and good glimpses of another world that lurks beneath the glittery happy surface.
July 4, 2012
Not a theme that particularly appealed to me, but undoubtedly topical. A good selection of different perspectives relating to the theme - my favourite being the non-fiction piece by Robert Macfarlane.
January 6, 2013
The curated collection of photographs and pictures in 'Home' made a departure from Granta who usually use a single photo essayist. The images were very well chosen and collated and spoke very well of the lives of our island.
May 29, 2012
Granta becomes more and more disappointing.
February 4, 2014
Loved the variety of the authors and the honesty about Britain and how it's changing.
April 1, 2013
Loved the Ross Raisin and John McGregor stories as well as the essays by Gary Younge and Andrea Stuart
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews