Jude Cook
Looking for Trouble
David Keenan’s debut novel, This is Memorial Device, was a starkly sad and often very funny exploration of Airdrie’s post-punk scene. His second, For the Good Times, drops the unsuspecting reader straight into the ‘black fucking night of 1970s Northern Ireland, the best decade what ever lived’. This apparently paradoxical statement sums up the book’s ambiguous stance towards its tableaux of relentless brutality.
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'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad
'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