“Pakistani culture visits the crimes of the child on his parents. I would shame them more than myself. It would be them, not me, at the forefront of public scorn and ridicule”, writes Mohsin Zaidi in this powerful memoir, and to understand this is to understand the entire nature and timbre of his dilemma, and … Continue reading
“The door closes. He’s gone. I’m alone.” Moore’s narrator feels he’s hard-wired for abandonment, allergic to reciprocated love, only happy when he’s being rejected. Loneliness is the one constant in his life, the one companion that never leaves. “Loneliness can be the greatest gift”, he says. The fragmented nature of the text mirrors the … Continue reading
Before I Was A Bear ☆☆☆ By Eleanor Tindall The Bunker Theatre, London Nestled unobtrusively next to Menier Chocolate Factory, its more showy neighbour, is the Bunker Theatre. This former underground carpark is a welcome addition to London’s Off West End with a committed team and an eye for fresh new writing. Eleanor Tindall’s … Continue reading
Sartorial innovation has become something of a trademark, even a cliché or stereotype, of the (in)famous ‘homosexual sensibility’ (think Queer Eye). In Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay, ‘Notes on Camp’, she writes: “A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to talk about.” Better, perhaps, to show rather than tell, … Continue reading
At the heart of Niven Govinden’s short novel is the romantic off-screen love affair between two actors, the leading men in the narrator’s latest film. The narrator, known only as Maestro, originally from some East European country and now in his mid-fifties, is a successful film director attending a film festival in Italy for the … Continue reading