John Dugdale
The Time Traveller’s Late Wife
Like an actor with an Oscar-winning role, Denis Johnson has come to be identified with his award-winning Vietnam epic Tree of Smoke, even though that sprawling, flawed attempt at a Great American Novel was clearly an atypical work. Far more characteristic – and far more disciplined and integrated in its crafting – is this bewitching novella, first published in the Paris Review five years earlier in 2002. With Raymond Carver as his mentor, Johnson emerged in the 1990s as part of the misleadingly labelled ‘dirty realist’ or ‘minimalist’ movement. Carver and his disciples depicted individual lives, usually in rural or suburban America, and declined to endow them with larger meanings or connect them to larger narratives – of social trends, say – and big ideas.
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'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
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https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency