One Good Turn

I've read Kate Atkinson's Whitbread award-winning first novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum and loved it. I was surprised to discover that she is now writing mystery novels.
The point of view in One Good Turn is that of several protagonists -- a writer of corny crime novels, a has-been comedian, a female detective, the wife of a crooked real estate developer, and a retired cop all of whom are trying to deal with personal challenges. Jackson Brodie, the retired cop, appeared in Atkinson's highly acclaimed Case Histories . He's in Edinburgh with his girlfriend Julia who is appearing in a Fringe Festival production. An incident of road rage escalates to murder and a diverse cast of characters are drawn together in its aftermath. There are Russian whores, hit men, performers, cops, ennui- ridden teens and con men. Murder, fraud, adultery and various petty crimes ensue.
This is a very intelligent novel that unfolds like matryoshka nesting dolls.
There is good suspense as well as clever character development and I enjoyed it immensely.

Poetic License

The Oxford poetry scandal is making headlines. But back in the day we expected writers to be wild.

Poets do not often make the first page of The New York Times. Poetry professors even less. But thanks to a scandal across the pond, we get to read about poets sending anonymous emails to reporters, organized smear campaigns, sexual harassment charges, and humiliating resignations. More

Kerouac at bat.

Almost all his life Jack Kerouac had a hobby that even close friends and fellow-Beats like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs never knew about. He obsessively played a fantasy baseball game of his own invention. More.

Via Uncertain Times

Alice Munro wins International Booker Prize

Yay! Canadian writer Alice Munro wins International Booker Prize:

The panel, which comprised writers Jane Smiley, Amit Chaudhuri and Andrey Kurkov, praised the 77-year-old for the originality and depth of her work.

'Alice Munro is mostly known as a short story writer and yet she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels,' they said.

'To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before.'

The Jester of Astapovo

A new short story by Orange prizewinner Rose Tremain in The Guardian

Am I the only one in the world not yet on Twitter?

Samuel Pepys (samuelpepys) on Twitter: My Lord Bellassis declares himself fully satisfied with my care: seems cunningly to argue for encreasing the number of men at Tangier.
Via

The 10 Most Disturbing Books Of All Time

The 10 Most Disturbing Books Of All Time
I've read a few of these and agree that they are very disturbing, especially We Need To Talk About Kevin. I might add Susan Musgrave's The Charcoal Burners and Susanna Moore's In The Cut to the list. It still makes me shiver to think of theses books.

"Love poem for Gertrude Stein"

bpNichol - "Love poem for Gertrude Stein"
Via

1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell

'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.'

In 1946 Observer editor David Astor lent George Orwell a remote Scottish farmhouse in which to write his new book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It became one of the most significant novels of the 20th century. Here, Robert McCrum tells the compelling story of Orwell's torturous stay on the island where the author, close to death and beset by creative demons, was engaged in a feverish race to finish the book.

In praise of… American women writers

"The frenzied, and probably deluded, quest for the holy grail of literature, the Great American Novel, is one conducted by males. And quite macho ones at that. They are writers who marry models, run for political office, or who carry sawn-off shot guns in the front of their car. They are permanently engaged in acts of self-celebration. No other writers seem to exist, and when John Updike died, Ian McEwan declared the end, no less, of the golden age of the American novel. Except it isn't. Annie Proulx, Anne Tyler, Marilynne Robinson, Jane Smiley, Joyce Carol Oates, Jayne Anne Phillips, Bobbie Ann Mason and Gish Jen are eight women selected by our Review section today who can lay claim to be some of the best novelists writing in America today."More

I Hear It Was Charged Against Me

"I Hear It Was Charged Against Me
Walt Whitman

I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy
institutions,
But really I am neither for nor against institutions,
(What indeed have I in common with them? or what with
the destruction of them?)
Only I will establish in this Mannahatta and in every city of
these States inland and seaboard,
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or
large that dents the water,
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument
The institution of the dear love of comrades."

Fore-Edge Painting

Fore-Edge Painting is an illlustration on the edges of a book that is not visible when the book is closed, but only when the pages are fanned. The Boston Public Library has a online collection featuring different forms of fore-edge painting, ranging from the single edge shown above to the extra-neat all-edge painting.

Adam Foulds reads from The Quickening Maze

The novelist talks to Sarah Crown about poetry, fiction and the frightening challenge of portraying two geniuses
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Malcolm Pryce's top 10 expatriate tales

"'All my life I have been fascinated by tales of those vagabond souls who go off searching for promised lands and Shangri-las. People who sailed beyond the dawn driven by the belief that the other man's grass skirt was always greener. It's probably why I have devoted my life to chronicling those spiritual misfits, the people of Aberystwyth.'" More

DeNiro's Game

Rawi Hage's debut novel is about two young men, Bassam and George, living through the horror that was Beirut in the early 80's during Lebanon's civil war. Early on a pack of roaming stray dogs who'd been abandoned by their owners is highlighted. Unlike most urban wild dog packs this one is populated with the pure bred pets of the wealthy who'd fled Beirut for safer climes. This part of the book illustrates the faded elan of Beirut and the way the various factions have turned on one another.
Bassam and George are best buddies searching for ways to make a buck in their war-torn city. The novel is narrated in Bassam's voice:"We were aimless, beggars and thieves, horny Arabs with curly hair and open shirts and Marlboro packs rolled in our sleeves, dropouts, ruthless nihilists with guns, bad breath, and long American jeans." Bassam longs to flee Beirut; he is devastated by the violence. George wants to stay and progress through the ranks of the Christian militia. Guns are everywhere as is the game of Russian roulette from which the title is taken.
Once Bassam has made it to Paris he reads a copy of "L'Etranger". "Deniro's Game" echos its ennui. It's a grim novel but a good one. It starts off strong, lags a bit and then engages absolutely. Read it.

Stephen Fry's letter to his 16-year-old self

Just who was the young, arrogant and confused man to whom Stephen Fry recently felt compelled to write a long and heartfelt letter? Himself, 35 years ago.

Dearest absurd child,
I hope you are well. I know you are not. As it happens you wrote in 1973 a letter to your future self and it is high time that your future self had the decency to write back. You declared in that letter (reproduced in your 1997 autobiography Moab Is My Washpot) that "everything I feel now as an adolescent is true". You went on to affirm that if ever you dared in later life to repudiate, deny or mock your 16-year-old self it would be a lie, a traducing, treasonable lie, a crime against adolescence. "This is who I am," you wrote. "Each day that passes I grow away from my true self. Every inch I take towards adulthood is a betrayal." More