Forthcoming Publications

11 SEPTEMBER

Review of House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk Literary Fiction What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it? The title of this spellbinding work, House of Day, House of Night, somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived. Full Review

9 OCTOBER

Review of Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett Literary Fiction Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, come over here and kiss me, it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment. Full Review

Review of The Tower by Thea Lenarduzzi Literary Fiction How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream. In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. Full Review

23 OCTOBER

Review of Vaim by Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) Literary Fiction All was strange... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current. Full Review