Elspeth Barker
Beetle-Headed Whelp!
It is a daunting task for a reviewer to be asked to review the Assistant Editor’s own first novel. Hercules himself was not so stringently tested. Nevertheless, I accepted the challenge. I am not a coward. But my courage began to fail me when I realised that Philip Womack’s The Other Book (a title that echoes doubtless Henry James’s The Other Face) is not a book intended for grown-up people, but for teen-people. My knowledge of teen literature is limited to the equestrian. Nonetheless, I persevered. Do I not own two teenage grandsons? Might not a use have finally been found for them? They could be my interpreters, my guides.
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'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/artists-for-hire
‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2
'To me, Elmore Leonard is as comforting in extremity as Pym, and as safe, in the last resort, as Wodehouse. The guys with the best lines are going to come out the other side; the dumb fucks are going to get it in the head or chest.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-spoonful-of-elmore