Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. John Lavin Twenty years in the making, Sarah Hall’s seventh novel, Helm, is an imaginative tour de force. The Eden Valley, where the author grew up, is dominated by the shrieking Helm (the only named wind in Britain) and Hall…
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. Part Three follows on Friday. Karys Frank Sarah Hall’s Helm, a gale of a novel in which the Helm wind is personified in a bold, non-linear narrative was going to be the focus of this piece. I also mulled over reviewing…
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. Part Two follows next week.
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd pick their favourite books of 2024. John Lavin The Letters of Seamus Heaney (edited by Christopher Reid) is surely an important book, giving the reader a more unfettered insight into the mind of the great poet than the equally essential Stepping Stones (Heaney’s autobiography-by-interview with Dennis O’Driscoll). Immediately the lapsed Heaney…
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose their Books of the Year…
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose their favourite books of 2023. Part two follows next week. Mary Morrissy Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death by Laura Cumming is a portrait of Carel Fabritius, the Dutch painter whose reputation rests on the ‘The Goldfinch’ (a painting that formed the centrepiece of…
Watch Jane Fraser (Guest Fiction Editor of Issue Thirteen) read from the title story of her short story collection, Connective Tissue. You can purchase Issue Thirteen here and Connective Tissue here.
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. Jo Mazelis It seems I am always catching up with myself, so the books I read are often lagging behind the times. For example, in 2022 I finally read The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark perhaps it was, by then, too late…
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. Part Four follows tomorrow. John Lavin In Ruth, the central character in Loved and Missed, Susie Boyt has created a multi-faceted portrait to rival the work of one of her literary heroes, Henry James. If the novel’s early pages are notable…
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. Part Two follows next week.
Contributors old and new to The Lonely Crowd choose the books that they have most enjoyed reading in 2020. Given the nature of the year, not all of these titles were published in 2020. David Hayden Here are some of the books I read, and reread, this year, which made a difference to me. African…
Contributors old and new to The Lonely Crowd choose the books that they have most enjoyed reading in 2020. Given the nature of the year, not all of these titles were published in 2020. Hisham Bustani Inua Ellams, The Actual It is surprising how much writing in general, and poetry in particular, have succumbed to…
Contributors old and new to The Lonely Crowd choose the books that they have most enjoyed reading in 2020. Given the nature of the year, not all of these titles were published in 2020. Marc Hamer One of the books I have read this years that has stayed with me is Teaching a Stone to…
Contributors old and new to The Lonely Crowd choose the books that they have most enjoyed reading in 2020. Given the nature of the year, not all of these titles were published in 2020. Mary Morrissy History dominated my reading this year, perhaps because the present was so insupportable. Plague crept in, regardless, particularly in…