John Phipps
What the Babysitter Saw
Such a Fun Age
By Kiley Reid
Bloomsbury Circus 320pp £12.99
Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid’s first novel and a Booker Prize nominee, arrives in a flash of hype. Its protagonist, Emira, is a young black woman who babysits for a rich white family in Philadelphia. Her employer, Alix, reviews products for brands, a corporate grift bound up with a skein of flimsy, clicktivist feminism. Her new boyfriend, Kelley, is brash, older, and so tall he can lay his palms flat against the ceiling of a subway carriage. The year is 2015. What could go wrong?
Emira is unaware that her new boyfriend and her employer were high-school paramours whose entanglement ended acrimoniously. Reid skips deftly between Alix’s and Emira’s perspectives, giving the reader a God’s-eye view as the carefully constructed disaster plays out.
Alix is the well-meaning villain of the piece: deeply solicitous of Emira’s approval, she seems more interested in her babysitter’s good opinion than in her two-year-old child. She has an expensive house and expensive things in it; when she looks at them she feels ‘a painful longing to show them
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