Reviewed by Sophie Putze || “Where is the place your body is anchored? Which body of water is yours?” It is this central theme of identity and belonging that is broadly considered in Nina Mingya Powles’ latest collection of essays.
Category: Reviews
A Ghost in the Throat, by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Reviewed by Beth O'Rafferty || Perhaps the most striking thing about Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat, apart from how uncategorisable it is, is just how effortless it seems.
Midnight Chicken (& Other Recipes Worth Living For), by Ella Risbridger
Reviewed by Charlotte Duff || I don’t think I have ever loved a cookbook quite as much as I love Midnight Chicken.
Girls Against God, by Jenny Hval
Reviewed by Terri-Jane Dow || Performance artist Jenny Hval’s second novel, Girls Against God, is described as part manifesto, part time-travelling fever dream.
Strangers, by Rebecca Tamás
Reviewed by Juliano Zaffino || Tamás’ writing is defiantly hopeful – radically so – and yet unflinching, aware at all times of the inhumanity of both the human and nonhuman.
Weather, by Jenny Offill
Reviewed by Claire Thomson || How can we care about it all? And where to begin to describe what ‘all’ might encompass? The pandemic? Democracy in crisis? Climate change? The sensible answer might be that we can’t.
A Ghost In The Throat, by Doireann Ni Ghríofa
Reviewed by Juliano Zaffino || “This is a female text.” A clear declaration of feminine literary intent, the mapping of body onto text, text onto body, begins and ends in Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s genre-defying prose debut A Ghost In The Throat.
Sisters, by Daisy Johnson
Reviewed by Sophie Putze || From the beginning, you feel that something bad is going to happen to one, or both of the sisters in this novel.
Rodham, by Curtis Sittenfield
Reviewed by Laura McDonagh || Too elitist, too close to Wall Street, too much of a feminist for some Americans’ tastes and not enough for others. Except ‘feminist’ might be the wrong descriptor altogether ... How do you solve a problem like Hillary?
Blue in Chicago, by Bette Howland
Reviewed by Juliano Zaffino || While it may seem paradoxical for prose to be at once stark and ornamentally lyrical, Bette Howland was not a writer to shy away from such a challenge.
