My Policeman by Bethan Roberts – review
Bethan Roberts's third novel explores homosexuality in the 1950s with great tendernessInspired, in part, by the relationship EM Forster had in later life with a policeman, Bethan Roberts's third novel is a moving story of longing and frustration. Mario...
All Is Song by Samantha Harvey – review
Samantha Harvey follows up her Booker longlisted debut with an evocative tale of two brothers that resists the easy and the obviousWilliam Deppling is a man who likes to examine his own motivations and those of others. A former university lecturer, he ...
The Campus Trilogy by David Lodge – review
David Lodge's trilogy of novels about a fictional English university are solidly crafted pieces of comedy, the last oddly prescient about academic life and British societyDavid Lodge's three solidly crafted comic novels of academic life, compiled here ...
Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck – review
The connections between people and places and the turbulent 20th century give pause for thought in Jenny Erpenbeck's third novelJenny Erpenbeck's third novel explores the relationship between a place and the people who live there. Set on a lake in the ...
From page to stage: should more libraries become theatres? | Natasha Tripney
There's plenty that links the two – not least their umbilical link with communities. Is it time to think more creatively about what libraries can do?The words on the page fade to white. A voice in my ear instructs me to keep reading. There's somethin...
Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë – review
Natasha Tripney revisits Anne Brontë's tale of a governess trapped between the classesPublished in 1847, Anne Brontë's first novel has a documentary quality, being based on her experiences of working as a governess (at the time the only respectable o...
The Wedding Group by Elizabeth Taylor – review
Elizabeth Taylor's wry humour and carefully written dialogue are exemplified in this early novel, says Natasha TripneyWritten in 1968, The Wedding Group demonstrates the English writer Elizabeth Taylor's considerable strengths as a novelist, even thou...
On War by George Bernard Shaw | Book review
This collection of George Bernard Shaw's writings on the subject of war contains some rare and haunting gems, writes Natasha TripneyThis slim anthology of Shaw's writings on war combines excerpts from his plays as well as letters to friends and editors...
A Month in the Country by JL Carr | Book review
JL Carr's Booker-shortlisted short book about a first world war veteran recovering in rural Yorkshire has melancholic pastoral appeal, writes Natasha TripneyReissued as part of the Penguin Decades series, JL Carr's slender, Booker-shortlisted and semi-...
Shouldn’t there be more sci-fi on stage? | Natasha Tripney
Contemporary playwrights tend to give science fiction a wide berth. Are they afraid of looking silly?
In his volume of essays, Strong Opinions, Vladimir Nabokov said that one could make the case for categorising Shakespeare's The Tempest as science fiction. Of course there was an element of mischief in...
