The great thing about a short story collection is that there’s almost always something for everyone. Which is good because, though I don’t think highly of Nicola Barker’s much-praised writing talent, I was able to enjoy a few of the 19 stories included in this volume. It took 93 pages for me to f...
I don't really care for David Blaine. I don't really like his kind of dopey stoner like way of talking and most of his stunts I've always thought while kind of impressive physically I've always felt were kind of just clamoring for attention. What is wrong with that though, he is an entertainer,...
God this was difficult. I'm in two minds about it. On the one hand there are some outbursts of exceptionally fine writing, like this from chapter ten:“Dewi chewed solemnly on a heavily-salted tomato sandwich as he peered through his living room window, his dust-iced skin zebraed by the sharp st...
A strange book, which can be funny, moving, thought-provoking – as well as frustrating. But then it is set in Ashford, which is all of those things and less. The plot is hard to summarise, although as a reader you'll probably be more preoccupied with unpicking the Byzantine web of connections whi...
This is a stronger collection than Heading Inland, notable for the outstanding novelette ‘John’s Box,’ where a terminally ill man constructs his own coffin in a Warholian pop art stylee, and ‘Dual Balls,’ where a prim schoolteacher takes vibrating testicle apparatus into class to honour her frien...
Did you ever have one of your friends invite you somewhere and tell you you HAVE to meet this other friend of theirs, you'll get on like a house on fire, you'll absolutely love him/her, and then you meet this other friend of theirs, and you can't see why your friend thought you might possibly lik...
[3.5] I’ve started to associate Nicola Barker’s books with summer. It’s just that’s when I’ve read all of them so far, but there’s good reason with this one: it’s set in June 1981. (I didn’t consciously pick it up for that reason, but in that way that recently-read books often unexpectedly connec...
She’d had problems with her top row ever since she’d lost her first set of milk teeth. The main front incisor was buckled and protrusive, had a gap to its left but partially covered its neighbour to the right. To rectify this problem, a dentist had fitted Joy with a thin wire which circled her fr...
Jane sat in a window-seat and read her paperback (bought for exactly this kind of occasion), intermittently sipping her half pint of lager. They had arranged to meet in the Red Lion at seven o’clock. Jane hated sitting in pubs alone, she felt conspicuous, although in fact ...
– to this year’s bonzer Coombes Family Christmas Round-up!!!!! Surely it can’t be a whole twelve months since I sat down to write the last one, out of my mind on prescription painkillers (after an agonizing kidney infection), utterly broke and freezing cold, huddled up in front of a malfunctionin...
I’m frenziedly tapping away on my keyboard, surfing the www. Maybe he’s right. Maybe she’s ill. Maybe she’s very ill. The headaches. The constant hospital visits. The porter. The wildly overprotective ‘sister’ figure… Kidney failure. Must be. She’s on dialysis. I key frantically into Google. Dial...
He felt confident. He waited for her to say something as he stuck his thumb into his belt and grinned. Ruby squinted out at Steven through the half-light, her expression a mixture of impatience and exhaustion. ‘Oh God.’ His expression sank from cheerful to jowlful. ‘I’m pleased to see you too,’ h...
It’s a painstakingly constructed, slightly mischievous, and occasionally provocative/chaotic mosaic of many other people’s thoughts, memories, and experiences. I have not lived in the nineteenth century. I have never met Sri Ramakrishna. I am not a practicing Hindu. I have never visited Calcutta....