Amanda Craig
The Glasgow Boy
Jane Harris’s second novel is narrated by a spinster, the elderly Harriet Baxter, and concerns her relationship with a Glaswegian artist, Gillespie, and his family. Like The Observations before it, Gillespie and I presents a disorienting view of a household in which not everything is as it first appears.
Gillespie, we are told, is a ‘forgotten genius’, a painter who didn’t make it into the charmed circle of the Glasgow Boys (that loose alliance of painters who, in the 1870s and 1880s, came closest in effect to some of the French Impressionists). They are personified in Lavery,
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
'Wilson’s target is less a straightforward biography than a sifting of Lawrence’s legacy for what remains urgent and alive, the aim being to shed its infernal baggage in search of an abiding paradise.'
@nemoloris on a new life of D H Lawrence.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/sex-was-a-mystery-to-him
'One of the gloomiest, most depressing and yet most gripping crime novels I have read in a long time.'
@NJCooper_crime reviews new books by @JaneCaseyAuthor, @FrankRGardner, @gregbuchanan, @AuthorSJBolton, @ajaychow, @adeleparks, @PGJonesVenice and more.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/may-2021-crime-round-up
'Catastrophe' as a category 'is too large and miscellaneous ... if there is a "correct" response to an earthquake, it is unlikely to have much in common with the "correct" response to an epidemic'.
Jonathan Sumption on Niall Ferguson's 'Doom'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/prime-minister-versus-pathogen