Hilary Mantel
Black is not Jewish
There is only one rule in postwar fiction: don’t write about the Holocaust unless you are sure you can do it well. You must do it so well that it lights up the darkest days of Europe’s history, so well that you are a spark of light in that dark. Measure your work, let’s say, against the brilliant desolation of Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl. If you can’t match it, look elsewhere for a story. You may think you can hitch a free ride on the power of brute reality, but in fact there is no theme more calculated to expose a writer’s limitations – both his literary and his psychological ones.
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
The Disney film 'created the "standard version" that no fairy tale should ever have, for these are stories that are elastic, mischievous ... becoming slightly different with each telling'.
@LucyLethbridge on the story of Snow White.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/beauty-beastliness
His 'star – in the way writers’ reputations unfathomably come and go – shines less brightly than it once did, unfairly I think.'
@saradwheeler recalls visiting the home of the Bronxite E L Doctorow.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/doctorows-orders
Take advantage of our Spring offer today. Try 3 issues for £5.
Use code 'SPRING3FOR5' at checkout.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/spring3for5/