Review

Sweet Home by Wendy Erskine review – a gripping short-story debut

This article is more than 6 years old

Dark memories haunt these acutely observed portraits of love, loneliness and everyday ennui in Belfast

Lara Pawson

Thursday 27 June 2019

They hook you in hard, the people whose lives fill Wendy Erskine’s debut collection, but you wouldn’t want to trade places with any of them. To borrow from the balding man in a grey jacket, who makes a brief appearance commenting on the music of a fictional Belfast rocker in the penultimate story, each of these acutely observed portraits “penetrates to the heart of what it means to be lonely, or in love or to feel a failure”. An exceptional ear for dialogue, an impeccable semantic rhythm and an uncanny ability to tease laughter out of the darkest moments mean Erskine is perfectly poised to stare, unflinching, into our neoliberal abyss. The result is a gripping, wonderfully understated book that oozes humanity, emotion and humour.

 

Book of the day

Review

Let Me Go On by Paul Griffiths review – an exquisite experiment

Ophelia journeys beyond the grave, in a clever and affecting sequel using just the 481 words spoken by Shakespeare’s character

Lara Pawson

Friday 15 December 2023

In the mid-1990s, Paul Griffiths set himself a challenge. He would attempt to give new voice to Hamlet’s Ophelia using only the vocabulary scripted for her by Shakespeare in the original play. In 2008, 13 years after he’d begun, his novel Let Me Tell You was published. Among its admirers was Harry Mathews, the indefatigable North American writer and member of the renowned experimental literary group Oulipo, who described it as “beautiful and enthralling” and “a great success in Oulipian terms”. At the time Griffiths was curious to see if his chosen constraint might provoke another writer to take Ophelia further. Perhaps he got fed up waiting, for it is Griffiths who has produced an exquisite sequel.

Book of the day

Review

Spent Light by Lara Pawson review – the dark side of everyday things

Domestic objects lead to intimate memories and troubled histories in this glorious, genre-bending book

Sarah Moss

Saturado 27 January 2024

Spent Light is subtitled “A Book”. It’s not a memoir, but not really autofiction either; life writing, maybe, but the lives in question are not human. Pawson’s writing is prompted by objects usually considered inanimate but made and traded by people in systems that do harm. The book is among them, a physical object, in case you hadn’t noticed. (The book is interested in things you may not have noticed, or may have chosen not to notice.)