UNBELIEVABLE: 6 | History Defined

I've had enough of Sad Bad Girl novels and sensationalised trauma – but I'm hungry for complex stories about women

Stories about flawed young women have been favoured by the publishing industry for some time now. Bad Girl novels proliferated in the wake of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, while Sad Girl novels have evolved from the comic haplessness of Bridget Jones in the 1990s, to more…

The Conversation · Nov 7, 2023

Sarah Bernstein Breaks the Rules in Study for Obedience

The unnerving novel that earned two major prize nominations rattles expectations of how stories are often told

The Walrus · Oct 27, 2023

Why Are So Many Authors Abandoning Speech Marks?

Sally Rooney, Ian Williams, and Lauren Groff are just a few of the contemporary authors avoiding quotation marks for dialogue

The Walrus · Oct 3, 2023

Married to the mob: the rise of the smartphone in fiction

They interrupt narrative and disrupt plot – no wonder novelists have been slow to warm to mobile phones. But a new generation is putting technology at the heart of their work

The Guardian - UK · Jul 22, 2023

The indie publishing mavericks shaking up the UK books world

Last year, all of literature’s big prizes went to small publishers. In a risk‑averse climate, edgy debuts and ‘tricky-to-sell’ foreign titles have found a home at the likes of Fitzcarraldo Editions and Sort Of Books

The Guardian - UK · Jul 16, 2023

Review: Pig out on 'The Rachel Incident,' a comic novel about misguided friends

FICTION: Set in the early 2000s, Caroline O'Donoghue's novel is twisty and compulsive.

Tribune News Service · Jul 5, 2023

Nobel literature prize fell into my life ‘like a bomb’, says Annie Ernaux

In conversation with Sally Rooney at Charleston festival author says award has hindered her ability to focus on writing

The Guardian - UK · May 29, 2023

Amis, Hitchens and Larkin: bad behaviour and a messy personal life were once a gift for authors. Not any more

Flaws used to feed their sales but now writers are expected to be saints

The Guardian - UK · May 27, 2023

The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan review – less love triangle, more sex pentangle

The Irish writer’s follow up to Exciting Times is amusing and sympathetic about romantic fickleness – if not as spiky as her hit debut

The Guardian - UK · May 15, 2023

10 of the best – and most unexpected – erotic books

From Mary Wesley’s throuples to James Baldwin’s heartbreak in Paris, writers have long been obsessed by ‘the most sought-after and least examined emotion’. Here Lucy Knight picks her top 10

The Guardian - UK · Apr 26, 2023