Loss

Sister, where are you? – Clover Stroud mourns her beloved sibling

5 March 2022 9:00 am

‘CERTIFICATE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF IDENTITY,’ the freshly issued death certificate read. In the craziness and shock of grief for…

Sisters under the skin: Han Kang’s The White Book reviewed

2 December 2017 9:00 am

Before the narrator of The White Book is born, her mother has another child; two months premature, the baby dies…

All at sea — trying hard to stay afloat

16 April 2016 9:00 am

‘This happens to other people.’ The Guardian journalist Decca Aitkenhead says she had heard the phrase countless times, interviewing the…

Julie Myerson captures the sorrow that surpasses all understanding

5 March 2016 9:00 am

As its title suggests, Julie Myerson’s tenth novel is about stoppage: the kind that happens when one suffers a loss…

A fairytale return for Graham Swift

20 February 2016 9:00 am

The opening of Graham Swift’s new novel clearly signals his intent. ‘Once upon a time’ tells us that this will…

The perfect big bang that opens this book was too good to be true

19 September 2015 8:00 am

Houses, as any plumber will testify, do sometimes blow up in gas explosions, destroying their contents and inhabitants, but would…

You’ll never look at dried pasta in the same way again

12 July 2014 9:00 am

A calculated ordinariness unites the protagonists in Graham Swift’s new collection of short stories. In each of these mini fictions,…