The Heart’s Invisible Furies has a familiar premise. A young girl in rural Ireland is pregnant and is driven out of her community by the priest. However, this novel does not tell the tale you might expect.
[ About the Book ]
What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds – and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept.
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| Marilyn Monroe |
It happens more often now, even to people well versed in pop culture: one day, you discover that you don’t know half of the actors and actresses featured in the Hollywood issue that Vanity Fair puts out to coincide with the Oscars. Who is that actress next to Nicole Kidman? No idea. Who is at the top of Billboard’s Hot 100? No clue (Morgan Wallen, Steve Lacy). Emma Chamberlain’s house goes viral, and we are not quite clear about who she is, let alone what the 21-year-old has done to earn enough money to buy a $4.3 million mansion (answer: she is a social media phenomenon who has signed deals with Levi’s, Cartier and Louis Vuitton). This lack of pop culture knowledge isn’t just a matter of getting old; it shows that intergenerational and “inter-bubble” conversation has become increasingly difficult.
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| Shannen Doherty photographed at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, CA, on November 20, 2023. Photo by John Russo |
The 'Beverly Hills, 90210' star opens up in PEOPLE's latest cover story about her Stage 4 cancer diagnosis and how she hopes to inspire others by focusing on her future
By Danielle BacherShannen Doherty doesn’t mince words.
“I don’t want to die,” she asserts as a sliver of Los Angeles sunshine falls across her face on the set of her PEOPLE cover shoot four days before Thanksgiving.
The Bee Sting (Hamish Hamilton)
Photograph: Patrick Bolger/
I started writing The Bee Sting at the end of 2017. I’d spent the previous 18 months working on a screenplay and I was aching to get back to the freedom and possibility of a novel. But for a long time I couldn’t decide what to write. I had three very different ideas and I started making notes for each one: blocking out scenes, tracing character arcs, all that. Looking back, I can see I was nervous about beginning something new after being away from fiction for so long, and trying to prove to myself that it would work. But notes don’t tell you anything about a novel’s voice, which is the most important thing about it, and which you won’t discover until you actually start to write.
Any conversation about what reflects the best of world literature necessarily becomes a referendum on what literature can and should do. As chair of judges for this year’s Booker prize, I think it’s safe to say the conversations between my fellow judges and I were never dull. Adjoa Andoh, Mary-Jean Chan, James Shapiro and Robert Webb and I spoke for hours to decide on our shortlist, always going overtime. What, we asked ourselves, made a book great? Was it extraordinary prose? An uncanny vision? Was it even something definable or some more ineffable quality?
Chetna Maroo’s ‘mesmerising’ Western Lane has been chosen on a male-dominated list
‘Portraits of what it means to be alive today’: how we chose the 2023 Booker prize shortlist
Ella Creamer
Thursday 21 September 2023
Just one novel by a British writer has made the shortlist for this year’s Booker prize: Western Lane by Chetna Maroo. The list is also weighted towards male writers for the first time in eight years.
Four of the six shortlist places went to novels by men: Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, This Other Eden by Paul Harding, and If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery. Study for Obedience by the Canadian writer Sarah Bernstein completes the list. None of the six authors have been shortlisted for the prize before.
Previously nominated authors Sebastian Barry, Tan Twan Eng and Paul Murray join 13-strong field including four debuts
Ella Creamer
Tuesday 1 August 2023
A longlist of 13 “original and thrilling” books offering “startling portraits of the current” are in contention for the 2023 Booker Prize, the UK’s most prestigious literary award.
The longlist features four debut novelists and six others who have been longlisted for the first time, alongside Sebastian Barry, Tan Twan Eng and Paul Murray, who have seven previous Booker nominations between them.
A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (Canongate)
Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Faber & Faber)
Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (Granta Books)
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (4th Estate)
How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (Harvill Secker)
This Other Eden by Paul Harding (Hutchinson Heinemann)
Pearl by Siân Hughes (The Indigo Press)
All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow (Tinder Press)
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Oneworld)
In Ascension by Martin MacInnes (Atlantic Books)
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (Picador)
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Hamish Hamilton)
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (Canongate)
"If there was ever a crucial book for our current times, it’s Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song...a literary manifesto for empathy for those in need and a brilliant, haunting novel that should be placed into the hands of policymakers everywhere."
— Observer
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| Illutration by Lucy Naland |
BOOK OF THE DAY
This Booker-longlisted dystopia with shades of Cormac McCarthy is nightmarish yet horribly convincing
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Prophet Song imagines an Ireland under fascist control, breaking through the it-couldn’t-happen-here complacency of western societies
‘Soul-shattering’ Prophet Song by Paul Lynch wins 2023 Booker prize
Justin Jordan
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