D J Taylor
Take Note
Viewed sub specie aeternitatis, the freelance literary life can sometimes look simply like a succession of odd jobs. And so, without wanting any sympathy for the torments wreaked upon my sensitive soul, I should straightaway confess that I have in my time scripted in-flight videos for Cathay Pacific Airways, written reports and accounts brochures for defence manufacturers, and interviewed Damon Albarn for the Mail on Sunday. Earlier this year, on the other hand, there arrived what in the context of book reviews, op-ed columns and demands for 800 words on ‘an incident you’ll never forget’ was a relatively unusual commission: an invite from messrs Penguin to compile an ‘annotated’ edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four for the student market.
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'She digs her images into her story, so that they blow up like psychic land mines when the reader’s perception brushes against them.'
Hilary Mantel reviewing Margaret Atwood: a #BookerPrize double-header from the archive.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-realist-with-wings
In Ali Smith's "Summer", 'the coronavirus pandemic has arrived. Lockdown happens too. There are allusions to Black Lives Matter, to online abuse and radicalisation, to things so recently news that it feels shocking to find them in a novel.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/seasons-heatings
'Stevenson told W E Henley, the model for Long John Silver, it was "going to shoot up and become a star". Alas, it fizzled out like a cheap firework, as many of his projects had a tendency to do.'
Alan Taylor looks at the greatest novels never written.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-fight-to-finish