The cover describes Cathy Rentzenbrink’s Everyone is Still Alive as ‘A Total Triumph’. Ah, that rare beast? A fictional triumph? Well, it almost failed my first 30 pages test-reading. It was OKish. A Magnolia Tree planted in Magnolia Road doesn’t quite have the same resonance as say A Tree in Harlem . Middle-class folk doing middle-class things. Ho-hum. The other problem I had was I’d read her latest fictional work first. Ordinary Time tells the...

During a toast-making lunchbreak in the great de-cluttering journey towards a calmer self, found a tail-end packet of psyllium husk in the bread bin. This means the rest is in an air-tight glass jar somewhere in the pantry. (Hopefully accurately labelled in chalk pen). Found myself asking why. What did I buy psyllium husk for in the first place, nevermind enough that it didn’t all fit into a single jar. No doubt, some magical longevity recipe...

Patrick Radden Keefe (2018) Say Nothing is a book to savour. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award, Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and was named one of the New York Times 20 Best Books of the 21st Century. It’s not just a murder-mystery whodunit. But shows how money, power, and secrecy combine to warp memory and the idea of an authentic truth that can be picked up and put down again—and not just in Northern Ireland. Say Nothing...

I’d no idea who Tim Walker was or is, but because he writers for the Daily-hate-Mail and often works as a theatre critic, I’d stick him down as being a run-of-the mill and middle-class lad who done good for himself. His 71 pen portraits were mostly of people I knew, famous people. It helped that each interview had a photo. I could flip to that to see if I knew the face. Even with a photo, I didn’t remember who Antonia de Sancha was. Her...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent In the fall of 1968 I set out to interview Wilma Dykeman, and the animals of the mountains would not let me arrive. She was the reason for the trip and I should say who she was, because she has never been as famous as the country she wrote about deserved. Thirteen years before, she had published The French Broad , a book that took a river and its whole watershed and the people strung along it and...

BPL had tried in vain to find a suitable caravan to go off in with Bus Pass. The simple fact of the matter was that most caravans required a car in order to go off in them, not a bus. Local stationary caravans, BPL’s third-worst nightmare holiday*, were only for sale, and for £39,995. (BPL had a conniption, her first flat hadn’t cost that, nor her second flat either.) BPL fancied sleeping under the stars though, and found a lovely politically-...

Went to see ‘Practical Magic’ retrospective. Was it really 1998? Yet, I haven’t aged a day. Seeing that kitchen on the big screen again. Gorgeous. Top movie house, ‘Practical Magic’ house. Second, Kate Winslet’s cottage in ‘The Holiday’. Close third, any movie set Nancy Myers creates. Very excited. (In my defence, ever since the partial eclipse, have just wanted August to end). Fancy seeing several ‘coming attractions’ at the flix this Autumn. ‘...

Am of the opinion that British Bloke Siri (BBS) is a Virgo. If you happen to swear when frustrated that BBS has gone off on some tangent not remotely connected to what you just asked, BBS says ‘I don’t respond to that’. Defence rests. I rarely ask Siri anything. I don’t like its attitude, like it wants to tut and sigh before answering. In satisfyingly time-wasting manner, MacBook Neo has additional Siri accents; Australian, American, South...

After a successful day out, circumnavigating roadworks in a satisfying, remembrance-of-commutes-past move, Crankus , the carb demon*, in congratulatory mood, whispered, ‘Afterall, a cheese scone isn’t a cake’. It was in this easily-led frame of carboholic-mind that a homeward bound stop at Newton Dee for candles and chocolate (always allowed), became coffee, cheese scone and a life lesson. Driving a circular route I haven’t used in years, and...

Sean McNulty’s Excavatum has been described at the haunted twin of The Odyssey but without the $250 million budget. Half of which was spent on marketing. Indeed, the cover for Excavatum, A Northern Folk Story, 1953 looks like a child’s drawing of a fishing boat, with three faceless dark figures and at the pointy bit of the boat, beyond the cabin, another faceless figure looking out to whiteness of the borders and the blue surrounds. Some might...