Body and mind enhancement in Samuel Delaney’s Babel-17

I loved this novel. It was an impulse purchase although I was looking for a Delaney. I’d read that he was a close friend of James Tiptree jr, whom the world now knows was Alice Sheldon, and wrote feminist sf, so I wanted to find out more. Babel-17 (1966) is certainly feminist, but in a breathtakingly audacious … Continue reading Body and mind enhancement in Samuel Delaney’s Babel-17 →

Glorious snobbery at village scale: E F Benson’s Queen Lucia

The immortal E F Benson begins this podcast scripts catch-up from Really Like this Book, loosely based on the English country village. I wanted to collect together novels that showed different aspects of an English village in fiction, to see how a village was used, and what the village actually was. Benson's undying contribution to this … Continue reading Glorious snobbery at village scale: E F Benson’s Queen Lucia →

Jennifer Morag Henderson, Josephine Tey: A Life

I’ve been waiting for a biography of Josephine Tey for years, and was so pleased when I saw that Sandstone Press were to publish this one. Henderson’s book gives a vast amount of new information (new to the casual but devoted Tey re-reader, but possibly not new to a proper detective fiction scholar), and depicts … Continue reading Jennifer Morag Henderson, Josephine Tey: A Life →

Now posting on Vulpes Libris: The amazing, pregnant Spiderwoman

It’s Graphic Novels week over on Vulpes Libris, and although I was planning to write about the 1970s comic strip version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, Spiderwoman jumped off a shelf and told me otherwise. Jessica Drew is pregnant, she’s still working but about to submit gracefully to maternity leave, and she’s spideytastic. Captain Marvel … Continue reading Now posting on Vulpes Libris: The amazing, pregnant Spiderwoman →

Angela Thirkell’s Summer Half

Angela Thirkell is resurrected here from the Really Like this Book podcast scripts, for her wonderful, joyous, comic novel Summer Half (1937), in which the headmaster’s daughter gets engaged to the junior classics master, and causes mayhem by being horrible to him for the rest of the term. Other engagements also happen, because no Angela Thirkell novel is … Continue reading Angela Thirkell’s Summer Half →

So much unhappy beauty: Robin Hyde’s The Godwits Fly

Perhaps I’ve been reading too much Ngaio Marsh lately, but when I saw in the Persephone catalogue that they were reprinting Robin Hyde’s The Godwits Fly (1938), handily on the eve of a trip to London, I went straight to their shop. I had come across references to Hyde’s writing when I was reading a … Continue reading So much unhappy beauty: Robin Hyde’s The Godwits Fly →

Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm

This podcast scripts catch-up from the Really Like This Book miniseries on the mighty tradition of British humour in fiction is on Stella Gibbons’ fine satire of rural life and literary pretentiousness, Cold Comfort Farm (1932). It won a prestigious literary prize in 1933, the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Anglais, which marked the novel out as being one of the … Continue reading Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm →

Dark whimsy: Mr Powys’ Mr Weston and Mr Peake’s Mr Pye

Mr Weston’s Good Wine, by T F Powys (1927), and Mervyn Peake’s Mr Pye (1953) are English fantasies about sex, sin and other violations of civilised behaviour. Mr Weston’s Good Wine is an allegorical inter-war rural fantasia about casual rape, and Mr Pye uses a prim and postwar Channel Islands setting that shimmies with loathing … Continue reading Dark whimsy: Mr Powys’ Mr Weston and Mr Peake’s Mr Pye →

E M Delafield’s The Diary of a Provincial Lady

This week on the Really Like This Book's podcast scripts catch-up I’m looking at a total classic, E M Delafield’s The Diary of a Provincial Lady. * This great comic novel from 1930 has never been out of print, and is the quintessential British women’s middlebrow novel from the 1930s. Yet, I’m not sure that many people know … Continue reading E M Delafield’s The Diary of a Provincial Lady →

N K Jemisin’s The Fifth Season

The Fifth Season is the first volume of a new world-building series called The Broken Earth from N K Jemisin, a US sf and fantasy author, often on the big sf book prize shortlists, who recently made headlines for successfully achieving full Patreon funding to allow her to give up the day job and concentrate on … Continue reading N K Jemisin’s The Fifth Season →