‘Washington Black’ by Esi Edugyan (Book Review).

Slavery, marine biology, and raw artistic instinct collide in Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize and winner of the 2018 Giller Prize. George Washington Black’s very name is a mockery of his torment. An eleven-year-old slave on a sugar plantation in Barbados, Wash has not been brought up, but beaten…

What in Tarnation has Disney done to Artemis Fowl?

This month in ‘there is nothing in this world that Disney cannot fuck up’, we examine the trailer for that Artemis Fowl movie that should have been made when Asa Butterfield was still young enough to play the lead. The trailer subjects the story to numerous indignities that include a pathological case of seeing things through rose-tinted…

‘Everything Under’ by Daisy Johnson (Book Review).

In the Booker Prize-nominated Everything Under, Daisy Johnson exchanges one vivid mythology for another by transplanting the Oedipus myth into a remote canal boat community in modern England. The book is mesmerising, unusual and pleasantly challenging, placing unusual trust in the reader and successfully challenging a number of literary conventions.