Jane Charteris
Mixed Mailbag
Anyone familiar with Nicola Barker’s work will know to expect something different, not just from her own previous books but from everyone else’s. The very title of her latest novel suggests a wilful anachronism – I mean, in these days of email and texting and online banking, who in their right mind would steal a postbox? And why – what on earth could be in it of any value? Who even writes letters in the twenty-first century?
These are the questions to which two West Yorkshire policeman try to find the answers as they attempt to solve the crime, the only clues the contents of the disparate letters found dumped in a Skipton alley, a few miles from the crime scene. Cue an epistolary novel
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
We've extended our February offer for a week, meaning you can still get a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
Click below for details.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/
'McCarthy’s portrayal of a cosmos fashioned by God for killing and exploitation, in which angels, perhaps, are predators and paedophiles, is one that continues to haunt me.'
@holland_tom on reading Blood Meridian in the American west (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/devils-own-country
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis