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Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth review – the great chicken heist [18 Apr 2020|06:30am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/18/barn-8-by-deb-olin-unferth-review-the-great-chicken-heist An enthralling caper about a plucky band of activists with a crazy plan to free 900,000 battery hens in Iowa Deb Olin Unferth’s strange and brilliant second novel is a caper story about a motley crew of lovable criminals banding together to pull off the biggest heist of their careers. All the familiar mechanics are in place: the plot that’s so crazy it just might work, the jaunty banter, the mishaps, love blossoming between two of the gang. We also get the stock characters: the spunky greenhorn with unorthodox ideas, the cantankerous old hand, the reluctant specialist who is tempted back for one last job. Here, though, the criminals are animal liberationists, and the heist is freeing 900,000 chickens from an industrial egg farm in the US. As the spunky greenhorn puts it: “All those birds. Missing. It’s wild, it’s disorienting, it’s beautiful.” The reluctant specialist retorts: “It’s impossible. Impossible to organise, impossible to get them out, impossible to find places to put them.” Then, of course, he helps. If the book has a weakness, it’s in its relationship with the farming community in which it’s set. The idea of freeing the chickens comes from Janey, a disaffected, angry teenager with no history in animal rights activity and no particular affection for animals as far as we see. Her motivation is vaguely framed as rebellion, tinged by her contempt for small-town life in Iowa. Broadly speaking, the book seems to share that contempt, and its least appealing element is how it draws rural, working-class lives as one-dimensional, meaningless and devoid of emotional connection. People work at depressing, dead-end jobs, eat fast food and watch trash TV, and that’s all they ever do. Presumably, she’s trying to make the point that all life is turning into a battery farm experience, but since only the rural working-class characters get this treatment, it remains jarring. Continue reading... post comment

Finding it hard stuck inside? Think of those poor kids in Flowers in the Attic [18 Apr 2020|07:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/18/finding-it-hard-struck-inside-think-of-those-poor-kids-in-flowers-in-the-attic Lockdown might feel difficult, but the children in VC Andrews’s book were in that attic for years I’m editing my second novel. I say I’m editing my second novel: what I’m actually doing is opening the document and staring at it for a couple of minutes before realising that actually I’m not thinking anything, and that a song is playing in my head. Then I decide that I’d be more comfortable writing somewhere else in my flat. Next, I tinker with at maximum a couple of sentences before deciding that watching one quick music video would help me to be productive. So I put one on, and make a cup of tea. Then I come back and look at the document again and decide that I hate it, and think “well maybe you won’t hate it after you’ve eaten something”, so I get up and – you’re getting the point. Related: 'Awful and fabulous': the madness of Flowers in the Attic Continue reading... post comment

Inside MinaLima: the fantastic world of Harry Potter prop design [18 Apr 2020|07:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/18/inside-minalima-fantastic-world-harry-potter-prop-design The graphic design studio which created the Potter spellbooks, newspapers, tickets and posters on their latest magical book In Soho, not far from the location of Diagon Alley, the magical world of Harry Potter has carved out an intriguing legacy. The House of MinaLima gallery holds the work of the graphic design studio which created most of the props from the Harry Potter films including spellbooks, the Daily Prophet newspaper, tickets and posters. The Marauders Map covers the floor in the gallery’s exquisitely designed rooms. The House started as a pop-up in 2017 but looks here to stay – a second gallery has now opened in Japan. Continue reading... post comment

One Two Three Four by Craig Brown review – all about the Beatles [18 Apr 2020|08:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/18/one-two-three-four-by-craig-brown-review-all-about-the-beatles Humour and skilful writing bring alive a collection of anecdotes that retell the Beatles story In the build-up to the general election of 1987, Margaret Thatcher agreed to an interview with Smash Hits, the now defunct fortnightly pop magazine that had an estimated readership of 3.3 million. By way of attempting to avoid disaster, a prime ministerial aide called Christine Wall wrote her a briefing note that now reads as if it were intended for a visiting extra-terrestrial. The most surreal passage was about the Beatles. “Probably the two most famous BEATLES songs amongst many hits are YESTERDAY which has been recorded by hundreds of people including FRANK SINATRA AND ELVIS PRESLEY,” Wall wrote, “and ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE which was performed live in front of 640,000,000 people on TV in 1968.” The latter dateline was wrong – the event in question actually happened in 1967. And on the day of the interview, it was clear that Wall’s brief and inaccurate summary had failed to sink in: before it ended and she got back to privatising everything, Thatcher had managed to credit the Beatles with recording the Tornados’ 1962 hit “Telstar”. Continue reading... post comment

Women's prize at 25: what it is like to win by Zadie Smith, Naomi Alderman and more [18 Apr 2020|09:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/18/womens-prize-at-25-what-it-is-like-to-win-by-zadie-smith-naomi-alderman-and-more Winning authors explain how the award changed their lives and share their favourite books by women The Women’s prize was created because women were excluded from the world of literary accolades; in the last 25 years there has been tremendous progress, but female writers still face unique challenges. I am proud to have won. The shortlist was formidable and I was buoyed merely to be in the company of such artists and thinkers. Winner’s pick: The Street by Ann Petry. It’s an amazing novel – a pioneer in the category of the literary thriller, written in the 1940s – and it is being reissued this year. Continue reading... post comment

On the trail of a Nazi war criminal: 'It's my duty as a son to find the good in my father' [18 Apr 2020|11:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/18/on-the-trail-of-a-nazi-war-criminal-its-my-duty-as-a-son-to-find-the-good-in-my-father East West Street author Philippe Sands uncovers secrets and lies on the trail of Otto Wächter, his devoted wife – and the son brought up to believe his father was a decent man Audiobook: the first chapter of Philippe Sand’s The Ratline In the 1960s, my brother and I often visited our grandparents in Paris, near the Gare du Nord. As children, we understood that the past was painful, that we should not ask questions. Their apartment was a place of silences, one haunted by secrets. They only really began to be addressed when I was in my 50s, the consequence of an invitation to deliver a lecture in Lviv, in Ukraine. Come talk about your work on crimes against humanity and genocide, it said. Continue reading... post comment

Isabel Hardman: 'One of my most exciting botanical finds was in a Glasgow car park' [18 Apr 2020|01:00pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/18/isabel-hardman-one-of-my-most-exciting-botanical-finds-was-in-a-glasgow-car-park The journalist and author on how nature can boost mental health treatment, even on lockdown Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of the Spectator and author of The Natural Health Service: What the Great Outdoors Can Do for Your Mind. She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder following events she chooses not to disclose, and has intermittent anxiety and depression. She lives between London and Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, and is expecting her first child. How did you first realise that being outdoors helped your mental health? “I’ve always enjoyed being outdoors – I grew up in the country, and I was nerdily into gardening as a child. When I got sick, my GP insisted that I got out of the house every day. When she found out I used to do a lot of riding, she said: “Well can you book yourself some riding lessons?” She’d be as interested in what I was doing outdoors as she was in how my medication was working. Continue reading... post comment

Garth Greenwell: 'Sex is an extraordinary subject for a writer' [18 Apr 2020|05:00pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/18/garth-greenwell-sex-is-an-extraordinary-subject-for-a-writer The US author on writing about intimacy, the place for pretentiousness in art and surviving lockdown Garth Greenwell’s second book, Cleanness, seems to flow directly from his sumptuous, sensuous debut, What Belongs to You. Like its predecessor, the new work concerns an unnamed American teacher working in Sofia who falls in love with a man who brings him both great pleasure and pain. The book is structured as nine interlinked stories, centred around the narrator’s affair with a man known only as R. The stories are not arranged chronologically but, rather, radiate out from the three middle chapters, which focus most directly on R. Greenwell is in Iowa City when we speak on the telephone – he is a visiting lecturer at the renowned Writers’ Workshop there. Do you think of this book as a novel or a collection of short stories? None of the available labels feels to me suitable to the book. I’m very happy for people to talk about it in whatever way seems most helpful to them. My first education in art was as a classical singer and my first experience of how pieces can be turned into wholes in art was singing lieder cycles. The closest model to the book in my mind is Schubert’s Winterreise. There’s a way in which I hope the nine chapters are like spheres of intensity that are placed in a relationship that is not the consequence of plot or the linearity of chronology, but is instead a kind of constellation, that there are charged relationships between them that is like a key change, or a mood, or an echo, or a motif. That may sound pretentious, but I think there’s a place for pretentiousness in art. Continue reading... post comment

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