Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver is an uncomfortable read at times. It is a book which prises apart the building blocks of modern life – financial security, capitalism, family life – all based around the metaphor of a house that is falling down (both in the present and the past). It is exactly what you’d expect of Barbara Kingsolver, but it is also surprising and ambitious in scope, told through the voices of two characters living in Vineland, with over a century between them. Continue reading
Month: October 2018
Poetry Review: Ocean Vuong and Claudia Rankine
I found both Ocean Vuong’s collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric to be equally intense and unsettling, though written in completely different styles. As part of my MA in Creative Writing, I get to study a variety of poetry collections which don’t seem, on the surface, to have much in common. But through our seminar discussions we often find links and patterns, connections and contrasts that you wouldn’t see unless you spent so much time honing in on the craft of writing, searching for the logic behind the art.
Seeing, Writing & Responding for madeinroath 2018
When you move to a new city, you never know what kind of place you’ll end up living in. Nine and a half years ago I spent an exhausting weekend traipsing through the streets of Cardiff, searching for a place to call home. Roath was the last place I looked, and it felt just right – a suburb full of life, but safe too, and welcoming. Little did I know that it was a breeding ground of artistic creation, or that the annual madeinroath arts festival would become one of the highlights of my year. Continue reading
Book Review: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Spinning Silver is a beautiful and complex story inspired by the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin. It begins in a very ordinary way, told from the perspective of Miryem, a young Jewish girl whose father is a moneylender. He is so bad at lending money that he never presses for repayment, and consequently the whole family live in poverty. The winters are lasting longer and growing colder, the villagers are fearful of the Staryk who haunt their woods, and Miryem’s mother is becoming sick. One day Miryem decides to go out and demand payment herself, on her father’s behalf, little knowing where this simple act of courage will lead her. Continue reading
Book Review: The Turn of Midnight by Minette Walters
The Turn of Midnight is an epic tale based around the precarious struggle for control in the wake of the Black Death in 1348. It follows on directly from the end of The Last Hours, in which Lady Anne of Develish had quarantined her people to protect them from the disease. It seems that, outside of Develish, very few have survived, and those who are left soon begin to realise that the world around them has changed beyond all recognition. Continue reading