Rhoda Koenig
Marriage à la Mode
Some kind soul must have sent Kingsley a crate of milk of magnesia. Free of the rancid , dyspeptic tone that has corroded most of his recent work, Difficulties With Girls perks with so much curiosity and energy it might have been written in the year in which it’s set, 1968. The characters coping with that uneasy moment in the world ‘s sexual history are Jenny and Patrick, from Amis’s 1960 novel, Take a Girl Like You. In that book, Amis memorialised courting practices – above the waist and not under the clothes – that now seem as remote as the habits of the Medes or Persians. This time he turns his hand to modern marriage, which has changed a lot less in twenty years.
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
'In 1938, Alma Fielding, a 34-year-old housewife from the south London suburb of Thornton Heath, apparently became possessed by a violent spirit.'
🎃@LucyLethbridge on a true ghost story. 🎃
http://ow.ly/TVhm50C6Vbj
'The Craft’s first martyr', John Coustos 'became a celebrity and a sensational symbol for the causes it would claim: tolerance, rational inquiry, cross-border cosmopolitanism, relative equality and enlightened faith.'
@darrin_mcmahon on the freemasons.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/with-a-nudge-a-wink
'"Dutch Light" roots its subject in his local environment, explaining, for example, how an abundance of sand for making glass led naturally to a thriving business in optical instruments in Holland.'
Patricia Fara on the life & work of Christiaan Huygens.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/through-the-magnifying-glass