Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness (Canongate, 2021) won the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction. It tells the story of Benny Oh, a teenager who is negotiating the untimely death of his father, Kenji, and Annabelle, Benny’s mother, who is additionally struggling with her own health and hoarding habits. Benji also hears voices,Continue reading “What’s in a review?: Ruth Ozeki’s ‘The Book of Form and Emptiness’”
Author Archives: Nicholas Taylor-Collins
Mirror mirror: the ‘reverso’ poem in Kim Moore’s ‘All the Men I Never Married’
All night a bird beats its wingsbehind the wall. In the space between roomsit has the quietest scream. (I realise I cannot livewithout desire.) At first I think it’s trappedbehind the wall. Is it another birdthat moves, that seems to fall and rise again?I am hiding somethingin the mirror. In the morningI am searching forContinue reading “Mirror mirror: the ‘reverso’ poem in Kim Moore’s ‘All the Men I Never Married’”
Archiving grief: Patricia Lockwood’s ‘No One Is Talking About This’
Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This (Bloomsbury, 2021) won last year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, and was cited especially for its depiction of the Internet. In the book, the ‘portal’ is a virtual world that can provide access to ‘everywhere’, but is a largely desensitised space; it is where the protagonist spendsContinue reading “Archiving grief: Patricia Lockwood’s ‘No One Is Talking About This’”
‘speech language voice’: ‘Diego Garcia’ by Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams
In this form-breaking novel, Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams wowed judges of the Goldsmiths Prize by co-authoring a story of companionship and collectivity, even during pandemic lockdowns. But they also related the recent colonial history of the Chagossian people and the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia: the forced evacuation of native peoples by theContinue reading “‘speech language voice’: ‘Diego Garcia’ by Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams”
Dancing the night away: Joelle Taylor’s ‘C+nto & Othered Poems’
Joelle Taylor’s C+nto & Othered Poems (The Westbourne Press, 2021) won the 2022 T.S. Eliot Prize. It offers a searing history of butch culture in the 1980s and after, with both tragedy, epiphany, and liberation tracking across its 121 pages. It is a collection that stores tragedy at its core, especially in the magisterial sceneContinue reading “Dancing the night away: Joelle Taylor’s ‘C+nto & Othered Poems’”
Bastardising epic: Shehean Karunatilaka’s ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’
Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort of Books, 2022) won last year’s Booker Prize for its ‘energy, imagery and ideas [set] against a broad, surreal vision of the Sri Lankan civil wars’. We find that ‘surreal vision’ in its depiction of the afterlife—both the In Between (a version of purgatory), and theContinue reading “Bastardising epic: Shehean Karunatilaka’s ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’”
Seeing is remembering: the photograph in Annie Ernaux’s ‘The Years’
Annie Ernaux is the latest name to grace the list of Nobel Prize winners in Literature. She was awarded in 2022 for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory. Nobel Prize awarding committee The sense of ‘clinical acuity’ combined with the richness of ‘personalContinue reading “Seeing is remembering: the photograph in Annie Ernaux’s ‘The Years’”
Exhaustion and exhaustive: Colum McCann’s ‘Apeirogon’
Colum McCann’s Apeirogon (Bloomsbury, 2020) is a novel. I know this because it tells me both on the cover of the hardback edition, and in the acknowledgements. In the latter, McCann explains that this is a hybrid novel with invention at its core, a work of storytelling which, like all storytelling, weaves together elements ofContinue reading “Exhaustion and exhaustive: Colum McCann’s ‘Apeirogon’”
Top 5 blogs of 2020
The new year will soon be heralded by new blogs from me. But for now, here’s a list of my Top 5 blogs of 2020 according to views. Apart from anything else, the list provides an interesting snapshot of last year’s popular and thought-provoking books … Enjoy, and thanks for reading this blog in 2020!Continue reading “Top 5 blogs of 2020”
Trans* today or yesterday? Andrea Lawlor’s ‘Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl’
In a 2017 book Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter?, Heath Fogg Davis asks: ‘Why not use transgender experience to fundamentally question the social custom of administrating sex?'[1] Using a queer logic that has roots in poststructural theory—the intricacies of which don’t need elaborating here—Davis joins two arguments. First, he argues that sex-identity discrimination—which ‘involves judgmentsContinue reading “Trans* today or yesterday? Andrea Lawlor’s ‘Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl’”
Hyper-contemporary Literature 