John Maier
Alter Ego
Like every unhappy family, the Alters can at least claim a little distinctiveness. All three are in fact so distinct as to be practically estranged from one another when we first meet them in Andrew Ridker’s debut novel. Arthur Alter, a small-time academic, and his two adult children, Ethan and Maggie, by turns idiosyncratic and deplorable, are adjusting to the loss of Francine – wife, mother, materfamilias – who has made the best of her untimely death by disinheriting her philandering husband and passing the spoils of a lucrative and secret investment portfolio directly to her children.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Perception is a weird thing. Lawrence Durrell saw Hydra as a ‘great horned toad’ but Henry Miller thought it resembled a ‘huge loaf of petrified bread’. Niko Ghika painted it as a series of neat white and orange squares.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-call-of-the-wine-dark-sea
The minimalist Fumio Sasaki 'confesses that as he began to purchase fewer consumer goods, his meals shrank in size. He decluttered and lost weight. Accumulation is not just an economic way of life but a form of embodiment too. Enlightenment is reduction.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/gardens-of-emptiness
'The river’s desecration mirrors Colombia’s long history of violence: "for years we treated it like a sewer," says Ahmed, a survivor of a particularly brutal paramilitary massacre, "just like we treated each other".'
Patrick Wilcken on the Magdalena.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/troubled-waters-3