Christopher Bray
Birds On Film
THE IMAGES OF two birds adorn the cover of Geoff Nicholson’s fourteenth novel: the head of a dodo and the torso of a babe with casabas like cannon balls. Extinction, Nicholson’s characteristically cunning narrative reminds us, awaits both varieties of beauty. Dodos drop dead, dumplings droop downward. Only art, by stabilising and concretising even the most labile of ephemera, can make a stab at transcending the depredations of time. As Nicholson’s porno-picture producer Jack Rozin puts it: ‘Smut [is] a memento mori, but I think that’s what all movies are when you get right down to it.’
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
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad