trauma
Collateral damage: Vulture, by Phoebe Green, reviewed
Sarah Byrne is covering her first war, reporting from Gaza. But her pursuit of a scoop triggers a series of events that may haunt her forever
No place is safe: The Brittle Age, by Donatella di Pietrantonio, reviewed
When her daughter, a student in Milan, is left traumatised after being mugged, Lucia is reminded of her own violent introduction to adulthood at a similar ‘brittle age’
Private battles: Twelve Post-War Tales, by Graham Swift, reviewed
The latest short stories focus on everyday traumas: ageing, PTSD in a former soldier, and the loss of a parent, spouse or grandchild
The strange potency of cheap perfume
Adelle Stripe has constructed a memoir around 18 key fragrances, but it is the Body Shop’s cheery Dewberry that evokes her worst teenage experience
Surviving an abusive mother-daughter relationship
In a dialogue with her younger self, the Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis tries to make sense of her traumatic upbringing at the hands of a repressive, coercive mother
A haunting theme: The Echoes, by Evie Wyld, reviewed
The many ghosts in Wyld’s novel include the recent occupant of a London flat, a girl in a faded photograph, and, most disturbingly, traumatised indigenous children in Australia
The downside to being rich: Long Island Compromise, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, reviewed
A rollicking family saga set on Long Island revolves around the kidnapping of a wealthy businessman and the effects of it on his wife and children
Longing for oblivion: The Warm Hands of Ghosts, by Katherine Arden, reviewed
Arden’s novel spares us no details of trench warfare on the Western Front and the severely traumatised men dreaming of escape into amnesia
Bombs over Belfast
Caught outside at the start of a raid in the Belfast Blitz as the incendiary bombs rain down, Audrey looks…
Can giving voice to the horrors of the past re-traumatise?
It is 50 years since Ronald Blythe published Akenfield, his melancholy portrait of a Suffolk village on the cusp of…
Written on the body
Sue Armstrong’s programme on Radio 4 All in the Womb (produced by Ruth Evans) should be required listening for anyone…
When the boys come home
Matthew Green, former Financial Times and Reuters correspondent, remains unimpressed by officialdom’s response to casualties who aren’t actually bleeding: Ever…
