Sawdust

Player One describes itself as a novel in five hours. It is subtitled “What is to become of us?” So what happens in those five hours, what is to become of us and what is it all about? My first thought upon finishing it was that it was constructed as a vessel for several themes […]

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I know how I’m going to die. I know how I’m going to die because the Machine Of Death told me. I read about the Machine Of Death in a book. I heard about the book because it was an Amazon best seller. The book was an Amazon best seller because its self-publishers were able […]

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Let your next book be a revelation. That was my plea to Bret Easton Ellis when I reviewed Imperial Bedrooms. We shall see whether the next book he writes is a revelation. What I can say is that the next book I read absolutely was. Here is a video of the author doing his best […]

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Empty. Empty is the feeling left by this book. It’s set in Los Angeles. I bought and read Bret Easton Ellis for the first time on a trip to LA in 1996. But that was American Psycho. Shockingly brilliant. Groundbreaking. Polarising. Impossible to ignore. This is Imperial Bedrooms. And, to be honest/harsh, it’s none of […]

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Bleached white. Saturated turquoise. Vivid green. Disjointed fragments of story. Flashbacks. Elusive snatches of dialogue whispered into half-asleep ears. Portents. Licentiousness. Brilliant, evocative and economic storytelling. Heaven. Hell. Death (lots of death). Immortality.  Irony. Poignancy. Allegory. And the odd LOL. That’s my word association tag cloud for The Lost Books Of The Odyssey. This book […]

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I managed to get to the end of “C” without anyone asking me what it’s about. Which is just as well because it’s not a question that lends itself to a short answer. The answer to that question is usually a précis of the story and/or the high concept theme of the book. But “C” […]

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Norman Mailer told me to stop being a fucking pussy. I went to see him speak at the book festival and asked him a question at the end. What did he most regret doing, what did he most regret not doing, and which was the bigger regret of the two? I figured that if learning […]

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I’m reviewing this book before I’ve finished it. I’ve read just four out of thirty four “stories about people who know how they will die” but I can’t contain myself. Machine of Death is a book of revelations. In all sorts of ways. Firstly I don’t read short stories or anthologies. Mainly because I instinctively […]

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So you think you’ve got a community huh? Does your community really give a damn whether you are making a living out of what you do? Would your community feel guilty if it felt it had done something to adversely affect your livelihood? Steve Lieber has this kind of community. Or rather, through his actions, […]

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This is Ishmael Beah. The photograph was taken when he was 26. Ishmael is from Sierra Leone. Between the ages of 13 and 16 a lot of nasty things happened to him. His whole family was killed by rebel forces in a bloody and brutal civil war. He and a group of friends tried to […]

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