Claire Harman
Margins of Terror
I was in the Bodleian last week reading a book about a Brontë that someone else, far more engaged with the content than I, had found increasingly irritating. The marginalia started up slowly: just a lone exclamation mark here and there, a terse cross against possible factual errors, all very neatly inscribed in pencil. But then in the last chapter, with hope fading perhaps, the affronted reader could hold back no more and unleashed a torrent of correction and contradiction, crescendoing in ‘feminist twaddle!’ and ‘utter gobbledegook!!!!’ next to the penultimate paragraph. In a different hand, the words ‘Nutty dyke’ appeared by the author’s name on the title page. I wondered which of these trenchant commentators had been the first to let fly, and to what extent they might have egged each other on.
Presumably neither was very recent. Marginalia is getting to have quite a period feel. No one would waste their time defacing a library book any more when they could just reach in their pocket and post. Utter Gobbledegook would be saving his ire for a blog; Nutty Dyke might be
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
Twitter Feed
Richard Flanagan's Question 7 is this year's winner of the @BGPrize.
In her review from our June issue, @rosalyster delves into Tasmania, nuclear physics, romance and Chekhov.
Rosa Lyster - Kiss of Death
Rosa Lyster: Kiss of Death - Question 7 by Richard Flanagan
literaryreview.co.uk
‘At times, Orbital feels almost like a long poem.’
@sam3reynolds on Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, the winner of this year’s @TheBookerPrizes
Sam Reynolds - Islands in the Sky
Sam Reynolds: Islands in the Sky - Orbital by Samantha Harvey
literaryreview.co.uk
Nick Harkaway, John le Carré's son, has gone back to the 1960s with a new novel featuring his father's anti-hero, George Smiley.
But is this the missing link in le Carré’s oeuvre, asks @ddguttenplan, or is there something awry?
D D Guttenplan - Smiley Redux
D D Guttenplan: Smiley Redux - Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway
literaryreview.co.uk