Occasionally one finds succinct answers to the rather conservation [sic -- obv. we mean ‘conservative’] objections that all this POMO is just self-indulgent game=playing with language, (etc). And, yes, we can blame DFW for earning this lazy accusation so much cred. I really don't want to rehear...
To paraphrase one fondl(e)y viewed meviewer, Josipovici flirts with postmodernism, Adair is a proud proponent. Frankly, the division is artificial, but since both state firmly their respective camps (no pun intended), resistance is useless.While Only Joking appeared in 2010, a playful twist on th...
A wonderful novel, written with the kind of self-conscious brio that I adore. Transposing (‘transtemporising’, I suppose) the action of Cocteau's Les Enfants terribles to a more revolutionary 1968 – when Adair himself had been in Paris – it re-examines the same themes of juvenile sexuality and de...
Love and Death on Long Island by Gilbert Adair centres on the development of an obsession that in many respects greatly resembles Death in Venice (which I only read for the first time earlier this year). There’s no doubt that the allusions to Thomas Mann’s classic text are quite deliberate.Like D...
London 1946. An actress is murdered, not just on camera but in full view of a crowded film set. Only six people had an opportunity to administer the poison yet not one of them had a conceivable motive. As Evadne Mount, bestselling crime novelist, discovers, however, all six did have a motive for ...
Ein verschneites Herrenhaus am Rande von Dartmoor im Jahre 1935: Colonel Roger ffolkes gibt ein Abendessen für Freunde des Hauses. Was keiner zu wissen scheint: Oben im Dachgeschoss liegt eine Leiche mit einem Einschussloch im Herzen. Es ist Mord. Der Raum ist von innen verschlossen. Und jeder de...
Only thirty-eight hours ago! It was not to be believed. The once drowsy little Meiringen was crawling with plainclothes police agents, Swiss but also no doubt British, whom we tried to single out from holidaying promenaders. From time to time, the fanfare of a siren would wail way off on the far ...
‘Are you all right?’ and ‘You really feel you should have got up so soon?’ and ‘You’ve had a dreadful, dreadful shock, you know – would you like me to have Mrs Varley prepare you a cold compress or a nice cup of camomile tea?’ To all of which Selina offered a series of unexpectedly self-controlle...