It’s difficult to write about this text, mainly because it defies categorisation and scrambles the logic of what we understand by the noun, “novel”. Whilst the front cover proclaims it is a novel, the inside blurb calls it ‘a mash-up of love story, pornography, art criticism, literary appropriation, and essayistic meditation, operating on the peripheries … Continue reading
On the Red Hill: Where Four Lives Fell Into Place By Mike Parker As a sub-genre, or micro-genre, what we might call ‘queer rural’ is rather on the small side, because writers, more often than not, tend to locate their queer narratives – as queers mostly live their lives – in cities. For many LGBTQ … Continue reading
Drag: The Complete Story Simon Doonan From Danny La Rue to Chi Chi Larue, from Rome to the Renaissance, right up to Rupaul’s Drag Race, and beyond, drag has played a major role in subcultures and sometimes the mainstream. Our love of cross-dressing has been a major component of queer culture for centuries, and this … Continue reading
After his extraordinary debut novel, What Belongs to You, was published, I eagerly anticipated Garth Greenwell’s second novel. What Belongs to You was set in Sofia, Bulgaria and the main character taught literature at the American school The same setting frames the second novel. In neither is the narrator named and the characters are identified … Continue reading
If you are a Rachel Maddow fan and follow her show, you would expect this biography to be complimentary. It does live up to that presumption. Though there are no bombshells in the book, it does provide some insight into Maddow’s approach to her work and how it has evolved throughout her (still young) life. … Continue reading