I know very little about Spain or Spanish literature, so I have little of note to say about this novel, but I was struck by how Galdós alloys biting satire with humanity. His characters are ridiculed but always treated with a certain basic decency. Some of this is done ironically, but not, I think, all of it. Which isn’t to say Galdós is pulling his punches: the humanity sharpens the blade, so it cuts cleaner and deeper.
Manchester-based and decreasingly ginger writer, bee enthusiast, father and nincompoop.
A Life of One’s Own (Joanna Biggs)
A Life of One’s Own is plainly a book with a lot to offer, much of it up my street: literature; feminism; personal growth. But I wasn’t looking for anything in particular from it. I bought because it was coincidentally due for release shortly after I finally got around to Biggs’ last book, which I thought was superb. That doesn’t leave me with much of a measure of success, but handily, the book succeeds on its own terms, is plain about what those terms are, and makes a strong case for why they matter. A Life of One’s Own is a collection of eight essays on women writers’ lives and works, through which are threaded the author’s reflections on the reworking of her life that began with her divorce. Both elements are handled deftly, but they come together into something more universal. Early in the book, Biggs writes: I used…
New Ghost Stories IV (various, ed. Rob Redman)
New Ghost Stories IV is a Fiction Desk anthology of new supernatural short fiction, featuring my story ‘The Double’.
Residual Spirits
A 250-word story about being haunted by the parts of you you’ve lost.
Is anyone out there making lofi electronic covers of AC/DC under the name ADC/DAC?
Tetris (Box Brown)
I didn’t write about this when I finished it a month or two ago, because I was pressed for time and because I didn’t know what to say about it. I enjoyed it a lot, but I’m not an experienced enough reader of comics or graphic novels to know how to talk about them. But I’ve recently been battered with adverts for Tetris World Tour, a microtransaction-pushing, power-up-laden mobile Tetris game, and it made me think of this page: I’m glad Alexey Pajitnov got paid, but I’m not sure Tetris World Tour is a better representation of the ideals Henk Rogers sets out on this page than the various lovingly-made free Tetris implementations that The Tetris Company has squashed over the years. I don’t read a lot of this kind of creative non-fiction, so I’ve never given much thought about the way it butts up against reality in places like…
Children’s TV pitch: Grace Petrie’s Amazing Machines. They kill fascists, and they’re machines. This would by my son’s ideal television programme.
These are very different books, but since I read them one after the other, of course I was going to end up seeing similarities.
My four-year-old has just coined the phrase ‘vehicles of prey’. Sharing in case the urbanists out there need a new term for SUVs and the like.
‘The Double’ in The Fiction Desk
My story ‘The Double will appear in the next Fiction Desk anthology, New Ghost Stories IV, available now. It’s for anyone who’s ever felt divided, or who can no longer go to their preferred café.