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.’

Jun 2004

Hollywood Inside Out

‘Sober people, they’re not for me’

A Visionary Victorian

The Life of Bryan

Melody Makers

Wallpaper and the Wilderness

In Praise of His Bobness

Singing for Their Supper

Christopher Bray

Dylan at Seventy

Folk Hero

Egotism In C Major

Still Making Our Day

Penny Lane

Follow the Trail

A Sentimental Journey

Learning to Live, Again

Christopher Bray is Cheered Up By Four Books on Happiness

Moralist of the Silver Screed

The Sumpsons

Sign Up to our newsletter

@Lit_Review

Last Tweets