Suzi Feay
Summer of ’89
Looking Glass Sound
By Catriona Ward
Viper 352pp £16.99
Catriona Ward’s 2021 psychological thriller The Last House on Needless Street was a commercial and critical success, likened to the work of Shirley Jackson and Sarah Waters, gaining plaudits from eminences such as Joanne Harris and Stephen King. The narrative centres on inhibited, isolated Ted, his beloved cat, Olivia, and a young girl he pretends is his daughter but whom he seems to be cruelly keeping prisoner. Another voice is that of a woman whose six-year-old sister vanished on a day out at a nearby lake. Dee is bent on investigation and revenge, since the police have got nowhere. Ward used competing first-person narratives to brilliant effect, upending all the expectations of the genre to send the reader hurtling to a conclusion filled with extraordinary insight and compassion.
Her latest novel also keeps the reader turning page after page long after the bedroom light should have been switched off. The opening is a luminous evocation, worthy of Donna Tartt, of a teenage summer in 1989 spent by the seaside in Maine. Lonely Wilder, miserable at school, meets flame-haired
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
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm