This strange and beautiful novel was published in 1921, perfectly positioned among Stella Benson's Living Alone (1919), David Garnett's Lady Into Fox (1922) and Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes (1926). All belong to the category of fantasy that allows the fantastical to live alongside the mundane, without comment or criticism, although mild resentment may be present, … Continue reading Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget
Ursula Le Guin has died, and I’m currently living in a different country to all my copies of her books. So I had recourse to my reading diaries to find out what I’d read of her work in the past ten years. Lavinia (2008) This is the only one of Le Guin’s historical fantasy … Continue reading Reading some Ursula Le Guin
About 18 months ago I wrote about Susan Cooper's five-novel sequence called The Dark Is Rising. If published today they would be classified as children's / YA fantasy fiction. In the 1960s and 1970s when the five individual novels first came out - my editions are the slim 1980s Puffins with tight leading and a … Continue reading Re-reading Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising
I don’t usually write negative reviews of books, because (1) it’s usually not fair on a writer to pillory them in public, (2) why waste the reader’s time? But sometimes writing a reasoned critical appraisal for the record can be a public service. For those searching online to find out if anyone else hated this book … Continue reading Sorrow and anger: Books I couldn’t finish or wished I hadn’t started
I’ve struggled hard to get through Cloud & Ashes by Greer Gilman. I’ve already written about her seventeenth-century historical novellas starring Ben Jonson, which I consider completely brilliant. Cloud & Ashes is different, in that its setting is pre-industrial, magical and timeless, rather than in the English court of James I and VI. Its three … Continue reading Greer Gilman’s Cloud and Ashes: An Interim Reading
Greer Gilman’s Exit, Pursued by a Bear was published in 2014, preceded by Cry Murder! In A Small Voice in 2013. These are historical novels published by the estimable and alluring Small Beer Press, in saddle-stitched chapbooks of high quality and good design (e-book versions are also possible). They share a protagonist, the English playwright … Continue reading Greer Gilman’s Jonsonian fantasies
I happened upon this beautiful Gaiman-Riddell collaboration from 2014 in the Cambridge branch of Forbidden Planet, and was looked upon strangely when I bore it back to my friends in triumph. I explained that since I live abroad I have fewer ways of finding out what is creeping into bookshops without notifying me, and their … Continue reading Neil Gaiman’s The Sleeper and the Spindle
