‘The Monsters We Deserve’ by Marcus Sedgwick (Book Review)

It started off so well and went downhill so quickly. Marcus Sedgwick’s stunningly bound and illustrated The Monsters We Deserve starts out as a good, atmospheric gothic novel and ends up as…well, I’m still not sure what it ends up as. The Monsters We Deserve (admittedly an awesome title) opens in a remote chalet in the Swiss…

‘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…

‘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.