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This review is part of the No Man's Land Reading Project, an attempt to right a gendered imbalance in my reading and a general imbalance in the availability of reviews (by men, especially) of works by female authors. I haven't read many English novels from the mid-19th century. I've never read a work by Dickens, … Continue reading Book Review — The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by Anne Brontë
This review is part of the No Man's Land Reading Project, an attempt to right a gendered imbalance in my reading and a general imbalance in the availability of reviews (by men, especially) of works by female authors. There is a moment in most readers' lives that changes the way they think of first-person narrators: the … Continue reading Book Review — The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt
This review is part of the No Man's Land Reading Project, an attempt to right a gendered imbalance in my reading and a general imbalance in the availability of reviews (by men, especially) of works by female authors. When I first read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929) in 2014, I put it down feeling … Continue reading Book Review — The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood
This review is part of the No Man's Land Reading Project, an attempt to right a gendered imbalance in my reading and a general imbalance in the availability of reviews (by men, especially) of works by female authors. Unsympathetic male characters have never been a great draw for me. Making them intelligent, stupid, anarchic, suburban, … Continue reading Book Review — The Autograph Man (2002) by Zadie Smith
This review is part of the No Man's Land Reading Project, an attempt to right a gendered imbalance in my reading and a general imbalance in the availability of reviews (by men, especially) of works by female authors. Until last year, The Watch Tower (1966) was Elizabeth Harrower's last book. She attempted to write another, abandoned the project and … Continue reading Book Review — The Watch Tower (1966) by Elizabeth Harrower
A shot rang out. Blanks, thought Detective Hunt, the thought proving to him twice over in a single instant that he was still alive. First in the realisation's presence in his mind. His mind was still equipping itself for business. Second in the fact within the realisation. The blanks Espinosa had subbed into Griggs' gun had rendered … Continue reading Two hundred words on a shot that rang out ::
Do you think gaudy colours can gloss over the misery of the world? Do you think loud orgies of good taste can drown the moans of the tortured earth? ... Art is the sacred torch that must shed its merciful light into all life's terrible depths, into every shameful and sorrowful abyss; art is the … Continue reading Thomas Mann (1875-1955), on the Purpose of Art ::
