Suicide
The joyless rants of Andrea Long Chu
The critic’s modishly provocative takedowns of successful contemporary writers, signed off with vapid aphorisms, make for dispiriting rather than stimulating reading
Courage and humour in the face of unimaginable grief
Miriam Toews meditates on suicide, silence and the messiness of survival as she attempts to answer the question: ‘Why Do I Write’?
‘Too bohemian for Bournemouth’: the young Lawrence Durrell
Begged by his mother to go somewhere his behaviour wouldn’t ‘show so much’, the future novelist, aged 19, embarked on a lifetime of travel and rarely visited Britain again
Bloodbath at West Chapple farm
Fifty years after its original publication, John Cornwell’s account of the Devon murder mystery involving three dysfunctional siblings remains as haunting as ever
The weirdness of the pre-Beatles pop world
As his mental health declined, the record producer Joe Meek grew increasingly fascinated by the other-worldly, communing in graveyards with Buddy Holly and the Pharaoh Ramses the Great
Let prisoners phone home
‘A society is measured by the treatment of its prisoners,’ Winston Churchill said. Last year, in England and Wales, every…
Refugee lives: The Singularity, by Balsam Karam, reviewed
The stories of two tragic mothers are interwoven in a haunting novel revolving around war, displacement, despair and the loss of children
Making tracks
Now in her seventies, the travel writer returns to her childhood in Australia, and the trauma of losing her mother at the age of 11
Spiral of despair
John Niven had to fight hard to discover why his suicidal brother was left alone and unmonitored in an Ayrshire hospital, with fatal consequences
The art of the impossible
A corpse comes back to life and goes on a road trip. Lorrie Moore’s powerful new novel leaves Philip Hensher shaken, troubled, but also consoled
Pie in the sky
Frieda Hughes adopts an unfledged orphan bird, regarding him as ‘a magical creature’ – but few others find him so engaging
Communing with the dead
Grief leads us down some strange roads. Few, though, can be as peculiar as those charted by Paul Stanbridge in…
Journey to selfhood
Seán Hewitt, born in 1990, realised that he was gay at a very early age. ‘A kind, large woman’ who…
Linguistic games
David Shields is an American author who has decided to collate many of the questions he’s been asked in interviews…
Life in the Afterworld
Angus Mooney is dead. Freshly murdered, he’s appalled to find himself in an Afterworld, having always rejected the possibility of…
A dicey business
When I was 14 my father took me to a bookmaker’s and encouraged me to place a bet. He wanted…
A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles
These aren’t diaries in the sense that Chips Channon kept diaries, or Samuel Pepys. They aren’t diaries at all, beyond…
Basic instincts
What does it mean to be a body in this world? It’s the question animating Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals. Our…
Life and death decisions
Leave or remain? That’s the question hanging like a cartoon sledgehammer over Lionel Shriver’s 17th novel. Although she makes merry…
Encircling gloom
When the unnamed narrator of Sarah Bernstein’s The Coming Bad Days leaves the man with whom she has been living…
The Spectator’s Notes
On Grand National Day at Aintree this Saturday, the Rose Paterson Trust will be launched. This time last year, Rose…
Dying of shame
In the early hours of 28 May 2014 the bodies of two young girls were found hanging from the branches…
Poet on the brink
‘A matter that hurts me is that I have made many hundreds of people laugh, in various cities, during the…
The dear departed
I can think of few novels as bleak or dispiriting as Yiyun Li’s 2009 debut, The Vagrants. Set in a…
Vol-au-vent horror
Not much was clear in the opening scenes of The Pale Horse (BBC1, Sunday), which even by current TV standards…
