isolation
The tiny island in the wild North Atlantic that ‘feels like the safest place in the world’
As Tim Ecott observes the breeding seabirds on the loneliest of the Faroe Islands, he experiences a sense of belonging to a secret kingdom
What rats can teach us about the dangers of overcrowding
The peculiar career of John Bumpass Calhoun (1917-95), the psychologist, philosopher, economist, mathematician and sociologist who was nominated for the…
In search of kindred spirits: An Absence of Cousins, by Lore Segal, reviewed
When Ilka Weisz, a young refugee from Vienna, accepts a teaching post in smalltown Connecticut, she struggles to make friends in the close-knit academic community
The skull beneath the skin: Ghost Pains, by Jessi Jezewska Stevens, reviewed
Pain lurks below the surface of these sardonic short stories. Happiness is fleeting, and ‘we carry death within us like a stone within a fruit’, one narrator observes
Seize the moment
A group of students in Iowa City meet in bars and seminar rooms, but, separated by class, race and wealth, their connection is only fleeting
More menace – and magic – on the moors
Andrew Michael Hurley’s The Loney was one of the surprise stand-outs of last year, and a worthy winner of the…
In deep water
Karl Ove Knausgaard was eight months old when his family moved to the island of Tromøya; he left it aged…
