Francis King
Teeming Panoramas
In my youth, neoclassicism in music – with its dinky appropriations from composers like Pergolesi, Scarlatti and Haydn – was very much the vogue. Now there is a similar vogue for neo-Victorian novels. My appetite sated on these sprawling works, with their elaborately melodramatic plots, their violent clashes, their sentimental conclusions and their larger-than-life characters, I often find myself wishing that they, too, would pass out of fashion. However, if novelists must persevere with the genre, then it is unlikely that many such offerings will equal, let alone surpass, D J Taylor’s Kept.
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
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw
'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