Miranda France
Prisoners of the Past
THE CHARACTERS IN Nadine Gordimer’s new collection of stories are each caught in a moment when things could change for them, but prejudice, the burden of memory, or the resonance of past injustices in the present thwart that possibility.
Take Denise, abandoned as a baby in a church lavatory, then raised by a couple who are classified Coloured in apartheid South Africa. Soon it is clear that Denise is white, and her adoptive parents make the most of the possibilities open to her, sending her to a school for whites and delighting in her appointment as a bank trainee, even if it means that she may
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'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency