Stephanie Sy-Quia

A late fling: Free Love, by Tessa Hadley, reviewed

15 January 2022 9:00 am

Tessa Hadley is the queen of the portentous evening, the pregnant light and the carefully composed life unwittingly waiting to…

More penny dreadful than Dickensian: Lily, by Rose Tremain, reviewed

20 November 2021 9:00 am

Rose Tremain’s 15th novel begins with a favoured schmaltzy image of high Victoriana: it is a night (if not dark…

A funny time to be Irish: The Rules of Revelation, by Lisa McInerney, reviewed

15 May 2021 9:00 am

Lisa McInerney likes the rule of three. Three novels set in Cork structured around sex, drugs and rock’n’roll and, within…

Mommy issues: Milk Fed, by Melissa Broder, reviewed

27 March 2021 9:00 am

This is a novel about ‘mommy issues’. Rachel is a Reform Jew, ‘more Chanel bag Jew than Torah Jew’, and…

A toast to brotherhood: Summer, by Ali Smith, reviewed

15 August 2020 9:00 am

The concluding novel of Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet is a family affair. Her intergenerational group of seeming strangers from the…

More secrets from the Underground Railroad: The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates reviewed

21 February 2020 10:00 pm

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s debut novel transports us to antebellum Virginia, when the tobacco wealth of years gone by is dwindling, due…

Rescuing the great British Cheddar

9 November 2019 9:00 am

Gastronomy is one of the deepest forms of culture. If you’ve grown up in France you know this, to the…

Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Credit: Rex Features

Missive from a living fossil: Little Boy, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, reviewed

23 March 2019 9:00 am

In his adopted city of San Francisco, the poet, publisher and painter Lawrence Ferlinghetti is venerated to levels nearing those…