Writing teenage fiction – it’s a funny old game. If you hit the right notes, fortune and glory shall be yours. More probably, you’ll cock it up completely, because after all, who really understands teenagers except other teenagers. […]

Step in the Arrhenius: the cartoon wall Pete links to reminds me of a couple of amazing Lars Arrhenius pieces I’ve seen over the last year or two: his terrific A-Z (at Peer) which had one of those flow-diagram comic art thing laid out across th[…]

Unpacking My Library Dept.: Last year I started buying a lot of books again for the first time since I was 16. The next trick is finishing some of them. My shelves are stuffed with admissions of defeat: maybe one time in four I’ve lasted until […]

I did not go to any of the seminars at ComICA – the comics season at the ICa in late July, but whilst I was seeing a film there I did have a moment to peruse the large comic wall being drawn on the way to the bar. And some nice person has now p[…]

Dual stories, historical hokum. I have a feeling that the literary establishment would not consider The Sacrifice Stone by Elizabeth Harris in the same sort of exulted breath as The Athenian Murders, but it plays the same kind of game. In story one w[…]

Isn’t it a cliche about tradespersons homes being the worst places to see evidence of their skill? Electricians and plumbers are known for having death-trap exposed wires and dogdy pipes as much as they are for being tapped up by bored housewiv[…]

I’ve just finished The Athenian Murders by Jose Carlos Somoza. I’d read a review in The Guardian which compared it to The Name of the Rose which is my favourite novel (currently read it 9 times) so I went out and bought it straight away. […]

(A better sense of the inside of West’s head could be gleaned from the photographs of the interior of 25 Cromwell Street, published in the Guardian colour supplement with an extract from Burn’s book, back when it was just coming out in 19[…]

There was a two-part doc on Channel 5 which made a claim about them I didn’t remember, so I picked up Gordon Burn’s Happy Like Murderers: the True Story of Fred and Rosemary West again. I quite quickly remembered why I disliked it so much[…]

I’d heard glowing recommendations from a couple of friends, so had to try Lorrie Moore. It’s a long time since I’ve read a novel so satisfying on every scale and level.
Her use of words is bright and playful, her sentences sharp and[…]