The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary has been widely praised by seemingly anyone who has ever read it. If you want…
Valley of the Dolls – A depressive backdrop to love
Jacqueline Susann’s The Valley of the Dolls, is widely considered a thinly veiled fiction, a roman a cléf. A reputation…
At the woman’s hands: Empire Falls
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2001, Richard Russo’s Empire Falls narrates life in the small town, Empire Falls, which…
‘The Taming of the Shrew’: 400 years later, wishing the misogyny away
It’s often hard to see why or how a Shakespeare play can be classed as a ‘comedy’, and ‘The Taming…
The Atrocity Exhibition: JG Ballard’s experimental dream sequence
JG Ballard described the make-up of The Atrocity Exhibition as ‘condensed novels’. And it is so well-written, albeit somewhat deliberately…
Imitation
Busy. Head is so busy. If it isn’t out there, it’s in here, it’s all just so loud. Brain busy…
The Way We Live Now: A Victorian Expose
Published in 1875, Trollope’s The Way We Live Now was one of the last significant Victorian novels to be published in monthly…
‘I see her back, and reflect it faithfully’: Murdoch and Wilde’s ‘terrible fish’
Published almost 100 years apart, The Black Prince and The Portrait of Dorian Gray in many ways hold a mirror up…
Ahearn’s Roar: Saccharine and Simplistic
Cecelia Ahearn’s Roar: A Story for Every Woman is a collection of thirty short-stories which read like fairy tales, with each…
The Beauty Myth: Capitalism’s Ugly Byproduct
The Beauty Myth published in 1990, belongs very much to the second-wave of feminism. Wolf examines the notion that women must…
