I found my first of London’s many lost rivers when I walked across Holborn Viaduct, looked down at the sweep of Farringdon Road below and realised that it had to be the path of a river, not just a road. Indeed, I was soon to learn that the river Fleet runs directly beneath, coursing down
Madeleine Thien’s third novel, recently long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, begins in Vancouver with Marie, who, like the author, is the daughter of Chinese immigrants to Canada. Marie tells us that her father committed suicide in 1989 and that, soon after, the 19-year-old Ai-ming — whose father knew Marie’s father — came to stay,
Holidays are a welcome chance to lose ourselves between the covers of a book, especially for those of us who struggle to find time to read amid the assorted tyrannies of daily life. So the book that ends up in your suitcase had better be a worthy companion. The disorganised need not fear: you could
[audioplayer src=”http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/261189280-the-spectator-podcast-the-wrong-right.mp3″ title=”Emily Rhodes and Lara Prendergast discuss the danger of books” startat=1095] Listen [/audioplayer] Who can forget the terrible climax of Howards End, when Leonard Bast is killed by a deluge of books? Death by books holds a horrible irony for poor Bast, as he had thought they were his salvation, seeking to escape
With ‘both arms stretched out like a starfish, her long hair floating like seaweed at the sides of her body’, Kitty Finch swam naked into view in Deborah Levy’s Booker-shortlisted Swimming Home. Similarly, in Hot Milk, Sofia Papastergiadis loves to swim —as, indeed, does Levy herself. Only, whereas Kitty swims up and down the gravelike
[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/donaldtrumpsangryamerica/media.mp3″ title=”Emily Rhodes talks to Isabel Hardman about book thieves” startat=1139] Listen [/audioplayer] Notoriously, during the riots in London five years ago, Waterstones was the only high-street shop that wasn’t looted. But that depressing lack of book-pinching belied a thriving -tendency. Think of a bookshop and you think of a musty, hushed spot where
Sikander and I are sitting at a small table in a small shed. The shed is filled floor-to-ceiling with books: chick lit, thrillers and a neat set of Agatha Christies line the shelves, alongside a large atlas, a few dictionaries and grammars, and the thin green spines of children’s learning-to-read books. More books spill out
Jonathan Galassi is an American publisher, poet and translator. In his debut novel Muse, his passion for the ‘good old days’ of the publishing industry is palpable: a time when books were books, with glued or even sewn bindings, cloth or paper covers, with beautiful or not-so-beautiful jackets and a musty, dusty, wonderful smell …
When Sara discovers that her husband died in India, rather than being killed in Afghanistan as she was told, she travels to Delhi to uncover the circumstances of his death. On the surface, Invisible Threads is a novel about an English woman on a personal journey to India, and comes with many of the trappings
Madison Flight is a divorce lawyer, nicknamed ‘the Chair-Scraper’ for the number of times she leaps to her feet arguing in court. She has been contrary since birth, putting her mother through six days of labour before eventually being pulled out by forceps. ‘Is she saying no?’ asks the doctor, perplexed by the distinctive ‘Naaaaaaaaah!’
‘You are like my cat.’ So I was told when eight-and-a-half months pregnant, just before going on maternity leave from the bookshop. I had hauled myself up from putting a book away on the bottom shelf — no mean feat when one is quite so heavily spherical — and this cat-loving young woman had caught
‘The bath is still stained pink,’ said Anna, laughing as we reminisced about those halcyon days, now over a decade ago, when she started a school magazine. Anna and I went to Westminster School for sixth form. We’d both come from St Paul’s Girls’ School, where magazines proliferated, and were surprised to discover that Westminster
Those of us who have been struggling to endure the recent heat should turn to L.P. Hartley’s classic coming-of-age novel The Go-Between for some advice. ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing,’ Alfred Wainwright wisely said, and L.P. Hartley’s young Leo couldn’t have agreed more. He arrives at his friend’s smart country house
Every summer this magazine invites some of its (randomly selected) subscribers to tea in the garden. Every Englishman loves tea and the pages of English literature are richly adorned with tea-time scenes. Perhaps the most gluttonous teas are to be found in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. From her exile abroad, the narrator remembers tea-time at
Everyone knows somebody who belongs to a book club. From informal gatherings of bookish friends in living rooms and cafés to ticketed events organised by newspapers, publishers and hubs like the Southbank Centre, and including rather more off-piste groups such as my own walking book club on Hampstead Heath, book clubs have become an integral
The intensely lyrical Ghost Moth is set in Belfast in 1969, as the Troubles begin and when Katherine, housewife and mother of four, finds herself remembering an old love affair. Michèle Forbes achieves a vivid depiction of family life — the daily squabbles and teasing, the nuances of Katherine’s love for her children through a
The continuing drip-feed of stories about governments and friendly-seeming internet giants sifting through our data has left some citizens feeling outraged and a bit duped. I have no doubt that they would sympathise with poor deceived Ellen North in Dorothy Whipple’s brilliant 1950s novel Someone at a Distance. ‘Ellen was that unfashionable creature, a happy
Happy New Year! No, it isn’t three months’ early if you’re Jewish, and those of you who aren’t might like to cash in on the celebration. So, in honour of Rosh Hashanah – Jewish New Year – today, I thought I’d pick out a few of my favourite Jewish books. This proved to be such
Sad news from the Campaign for Real Ale, which says that more and more young people are drinking at home rather than down the pub. ‘Pre-loading’ at home before clubbing has seen the number of 18- to 24-year-olds going to the pub at least once a week fall from 38 per cent to a measly
Those of you dieting your way to a svelte physique amid the flesh-exposing terrors of summer should take courage from Mrs Hawkins, the heroine of Muriel Spark’s wonderful novel A Far Cry from Kensington. Mrs Hawkins, with her unfortunate ‘Rubens quality of flesh’, only starts to worry about her weight when she gets a new