Ethan Croft
Unhappy Together
The End of the Day
By Bill Clegg
Jonathan Cape 320pp £14.99
In The End of the Day, Bill Clegg returns to his native Connecticut, the setting of his Booker Prize-longlisted debut novel Did You Ever Have a Family. As in that book, Clegg chooses as his leading character an heiress and member of New England’s ersatz aristocracy. Dana Goss is sixty-eight, bisexual and succumbing to dementia. Spurred by the prospect of a steep cognitive decline, she decides to resolve a series of disputes that tore her household apart in the early 1970s. But the standard method of reconciliation – picking up the telephone and ringing estranged acquaintances – is too conventional for Dana. Instead, she travels around the northeast of the United States in a chauffeur-driven car, carrying a brown suitcase full of birth certificates, letters and official documents, which, if read carefully by the appropriate people, might put right a half-century of wrongs.
Although some of the chapters are told over the shoulder of five other characters, Dana holds the book together, both because she is the most interesting of the bunch and because she forms a link of some sort between the other five. From the off, Dana charms with withering descriptions
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