Mark this well in your mind.

Vare, vare drunk.

Prize winners of yesteryear.

The kids aren’t alright

2 stars

A guide to the underrated bookshops of Manchester by Georgia Haire, Katharine Seymour and Hazel Shepherd

Patrick Cowling muses on JK Rowling and her new non-wizarding novel.

Rachel Longworth spends 24 hours as the Bloomsbury behemoth, but stops short of hurling herself into a lake.

Twelve years after a tragic accident that lead to prison time and estrangement from his family, Dwight Arno receives a visit from his son Sam. Deeply unhappy and misanthropic (due in no small part to his father’s crime and disappearance) Sam has grievously injured a man in a bar fight and his future hangs in […]

Does tumblr have anything to offer the literary scene?

For months Book Club has been confined to the dusty corner of the Literature section, begging for proper attention and desperate to host more uninformative, moronic questions. Well, Book Club, today is your day: watch yourself sprawl mightily across the page in a lavish and carefree manner! Watch as I ask several students several questions […]

Bevington’s latest book seeks to trace the history of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from its roots in Scandinavian epic lore, right the way up to present day postmodernist readings. The book uses a chronological structure to approach this mine of information, splitting the centuries into 7 chapters of around 30 pages each (so if, say, you’ve got […]

The blurb of The Doll Princess proclaims author Tom Benn as ‘an assured and exhilarating new voice in literary crime fiction’. However, classifying this novel as ‘literary’ works massively to its detriment and sets any prospective readers off on the wrong foot. Take its protagonist, Henry Bane, whose hard-bitten narration calls to mind a Mancunion […]

After great success with The Victorians, Wilson attempts to capture the spirit of the Elizabethan era in this single-volume work, aptly titled The Elizabethans. As a History student, I have come to be extremely wary of condensed historical narratives but Wilson’s new survey of the period proved to be an interesting and entertaining read. Wilson […]

What I read about The Art of Fielding (TAOF) in online reviews: Henry Skrimshander is a young baseball genius who might just be good enough to lead perennial no-hopers Westish College all the way to the championship. But – uh-oh! – one bad throw causes him to lose his nerve! There are also 4 other […]

I once tweeted that – IMHO – Mary Karr was a better writer than Joan Didion, and the latter retweeted me. There a lesson here beyond ‘Watch what you say or L.A Matriarchs that refuse to die might find you and eviscerate you while you sleep’, and that is: get over yourselves, Twitter-haters. Even if […]

I don’t want to like this book. Not because it’s not a lucid, compelling collection of stories – I just don’t know what it says about me if I do. Rachel Kendall’s slivers of contemporary gothic feature mutant births, rape fantasies, acts of bestiality and gobbled-up grandparents. All varnished with the achingly beautiful imagery more […]

Described variously as the most important, original and talented author in France at the moment, Houellebecq’s latest novel has caused ripples of excitement in the literary world. Dave Wingrave asks whether it isn’t all just going to his head.

Opening proceedings at the second week of the festival was a highly alluring premise, not just on account of the fascinatingly depraved subject material, but also as an opportunity to gain insight into a sweeping craze of modern literature – an evening with three prolific authors of Nordic crime fiction. With unprecedented influence, now reaching into American cinema (The […]

It was with definite stammering and hesitation that I evasively explained to my ‘plus one’ we were going to a show – about? Ah. Clearly should have based my opinion on more than just ‘Nuns, Italy, and the sixteenth century’. They have live music I said, and actors, I think. I prayed in the bathroom. Let it be good, […]