'She digs her images into her story, so that they blow up like psychic land mines when the reader’s perception brushes against them.'

Hilary Mantel reviewing Margaret Atwood: a #BookerPrize double-header from the archive.

https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-realist-with-wings

In Ali Smith's "Summer", 'the coronavirus pandemic has arrived. Lockdown happens too. There are allusions to Black Lives Matter, to online abuse and radicalisation, to things so recently news that it feels shocking to find them in a novel.'

https://literaryreview.co.uk/seasons-heatings

'Stevenson told W E Henley, the model for Long John Silver, it was "going to shoot up and become a star". Alas, it fizzled out like a cheap firework, as many of his projects had a tendency to do.'

Alan Taylor looks at the greatest novels never written.

https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-fight-to-finish