Joanna Kavenna
Schrödinger’s Plot
Caroline’s Bikini
By Kirsty Gunn
Faber & Faber 335pp £14.99
Why write? We might counter this question with a further question: ‘Why do anything (except to earn enough money to survive)?’ or – with thanks to Albert Camus – ‘Why live when you just die in the end anyway?’ Nonetheless, the question ‘Why write?’ is pertinent enough for those who do write, or would like to write if they were able to spend less time earning sufficient money to survive. George Orwell both posed and answered this question in a famous essay, ‘Why I Write’. (His reasons included ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’.) For contemporary authors, the dilemma is further compounded by the much-vaunted ‘death of the novel’, as well as ‘the death of books of any sort’ and ‘the death of words in general’.
In Caroline’s Bikini, the New Zealand-born Kirsty Gunn, whose previous works include The Boy and the Sea (2007 Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year), The Big Music (2013 New Zealand Post Book of the Year) and My Katherine Mansfield Project (2015), exploits some of the ironies of this
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
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk