Adrian Turpin
Love among the Drones
Distance is the best form of defence, advises a fencing instructor in I Saw a Man. But Owen Sheers’s second novel suggests that, away from the piste, such an approach to life can come at a high ethical and psychological cost. Its protagonist, Michael Turner, is a young British writer who has made a name for himself through a book exploring the lives of two brothers on the fringes of New York gangs. His technique is to immerse himself so thoroughly in his subjects’ lives that they forget his presence, then to eradicate all traces of himself from the resulting story.
Like the figure on the stair in Hughes Mearns’s poem ‘Antigonish’
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
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/
'The unisexual roster saves us from diatribes about the iniquity of the male gaze, and in any case the female gaze is capable of retaliating by aestheticising and eroticising the bodies of men.'
Peter Conrad on @markcousinsfilm's new documentary.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/lets-get-this-show-on-the-road
Dethier 'writes about mud buildings without the telltale modulations other critics use to distance so-called vernacular construction from the canon of high architecture.'
Building with earth may be the future, says @PhinHarper.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/build-brown-go-green