It's a bloody mess
When I came to preview the latest Garcia Lorca play to be strutting it's stuff around our steepled streets, a production gruesomely entitled Blood Wedding, I was interested to see how different it would be to last term's interpretation of the same author's Yerma. Thankfully, there is enough disparity between the two productions to make this one enjoyable in its own right, and to lend colour to those of you fortunate enough to have caught it's predecessor....
Books: Kid Me Not
Roddy Doyle is an absolute genius!" enthuses J.K. Rowling. Dubious praise perhaps, but less so on the back cover of his first children's book. Doyle has demonstrated an uncanny understanding of a child's world (and a sense of humour to match) in his other novels, powered by memory, imagination and hard work. That he should turn to children's fiction is perhaps no surprise.
But it i
Books: Enter Sandman
Smoke and Mirrors is an assortment, mostly of prose, from the writer probably best known for the complex and troubling Sandman and Death comics. Neil Gaiman's short story output is somewhat sporadic, so this collection is a welcome alternative to flicking brazenly through all the anthologies in the fantasy/sci-fi section of the book shop. The usual Gaiman trademarks are here: unexplained outbursts of magic, small but desperate unhappinesses, and a nice sense of the vagaries of invention - the introduction runs self-consciously into a story which, he rather plaintively explains, isn't the one he meant to write at all. Happily, this book shows the breadth of range among things he did mean to write, along with observations on the genesis of each story....
Books: Booker...? Bollocks!
Once again the circus known as the Booker Prize emerges in autumn to provide a welcome boost in sales for otherwise unreadable and unpopular fiction in the English (as opposed to American) speaking world. That the Booker has a sales effect belied by the relatively parsimonious prize money, and thus a commercial importance, is not in doubt; rather, one wonders if it does continue to "reward the best novel of the year", as they proudly proclaim....