Belinda Jack
No Romance
Wartime Notebooks: and Other Texts
By Marguerite Duras, Edited by Sophie Bogaert and Olivier Corpet, (Translated by Linda Coverdale)
MacLehose Press 336pp £19.99 order from our bookshop
Bled dry of sentimentality and brutal, Marguerite Duras’s language affronts the reader in these Notebooks as it does in all her writing. This is often down to bald statements made vivid by reference to body fluids: ‘Catholics cannot bear blood. De Gaulle is a Catholic general, meaning that his role is to spill blood but under orders. Popular uprisings make him puke.’
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
For the summer issue of @Lit_Review I wrote about THE GOLDEN RULE, @AmandaPCraig's latest: a lean, high-stakes drama touching on domestic violence, Generation Rent and video game design.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/murder-they-spoke
'He wrote obsessively and at tremendous length – as a youth William drew a witty sketch of his father vigorously beating a dead horse – and frayed his nerves in the process.'
John Banville charts the turbulent life of William James.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-pragmatists-progress
'Everyone talks about the light on Hydra, but sometimes there’s a very good reason why everyone talks about something. The light on Hydra is bronze and blinding.'
Joanna Kavenna on Athens, the Inklings, and why Homer thought sheep were purple.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-call-of-the-wine-dark-sea