Kate Kellaway
Was it an Accident?
Margaret Atwood is one of the most brilliant and unpredictable novelists alive. She is always putting her past behind her: her novels share no family likeness. It is strange to recall her early books, such as Surfacing and The Edible Woman. They were slender and graceful – and very much a young writer’s work. But Atwood has gone on to greater things. Now even her style is impossible to second-guess: The Robber Bride (1993) was fast and loose; Alias Grace (1997) – short-listed for the Booker Prize – was more literary, decorous, researched. The two had only one thing in common: they were compulsive reads.
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‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2
'To me, Elmore Leonard is as comforting in extremity as Pym, and as safe, in the last resort, as Wodehouse. The guys with the best lines are going to come out the other side; the dumb fucks are going to get it in the head or chest.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-spoonful-of-elmore
'As we read, we know that in a short time the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and colour television will sweep that age over the balustrade and into the sea, but for now everyone is happy.'
Simon Baker is charmed by Graham Swift's new novel, 'Here We Are'.
http://ow.ly/uDL050ylh80