Kate Kellaway

Could Be Useful at Cocktail Parties

A Whore's Profession: Notes and Essays

By

Faber & Faber 432pp £12.99 order from our bookshop

Not far from where I’m writing this (in Islington, North London), David Mamet, in some unspecified year, was walking along in search of a cup of tea. He found one in a café, opposite Islington library. At this point, reading his account and knowing the area, anxiety overtook me: which café? Was he well advised? Was there a café outside Islington library? None that I could remember. But I need not have worried. He was ecstatic: 

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'The characters in many of these stories are trapped in the obsessive present tense of their own thoughts; in the m… ,
    • 'Libraries, for much of their existence, have embodied in microcosm many of the characteristics of the totalitarian… ,
    • 'Moss and Cynthia buy several properties through which to launder their ill-gotten gains, take lots of drugs, have… ,
    • 'Never mind the imperial cult. This is the cult of Boris. What happened to Rome?' From the LR archive:… ,
    • Thirty-two years ago this month, we published Muriel Spark's short story, 'A Playhouse Called Remarkable' Read it… ,
    • Time travel, bicycles and white horses populate @WomackPhilip's roundup of children's books by @marcussedgwick,… ,
    • RT : Joanna Kavenna’s ‘Cooking with Trotsky’s Frying Pan’ in June’s is the most well written and interesting… ,
    Follow Us