Click here to read my review in The Observer of the new Everyman Classics edition of Elizabeth Bowen’s Collected Stories.
Denise Riley: Timed Lived, Without Its Flow / Selected Poems
Click here to read my review in The Guardian of Denise Riley’s essay on grief, and her new selected poems.
A bluffer’s guide to the Booker Prize
‘Reading Rushdie’s latest novel, with its characteristic tidal wave of pathological pun-making, paragraph-long lists and how-do-you-do-fellow-kids cultural memery, made me think of the question Frasier Crane once asked Niles: “When was the last time you had an unexpressed thought?”‘
Click here to read my summary in the Irish Times of the runners and riders in this year’s Booker Prize, ahead of the winner announcement on Monday.
Nobel Prizes 2018 and 2019
Click here to read an overview of the winners of the 2018 and 2019 Nobel Prizes in Literature, announced today, that I wrote for the Irish Times.
Mary Costello: The River Capture
Click here to read my review in The Times of Mary Costello’s exceptional new novel The River Capture.
(If you’re stymied by the paywall, you should be able to register for free and read two articles per week.)
Was Emily Dickinson the first Instapoet?
Click here to read a piece I wrote for the Penguin Books website about Emily Dickinson, and how the real one compares to the one Apple TV is portraying in the trailer for its new series about her…

How Jeanette Winterson saw the future
Click here to read a piece I wrote for the Penguin Books website about Jeanette Winterson on the occasion of her 60th birthday…
