RIFF.REBELSOUL DEV

Category: Literature

  • Review: Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks

    Oh dear. This is one of the most unfortunate books I’ve read in quite some time. Sebastian Faulks has a name in popular historical fiction and Human Traces, which seemed to promise a fascinating tale of two 19th century pioneers of psychiatry – a subject I have a strong interest in – gave me high […]

  • Review: Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

    Not the finest Discworld novel Terry’s ever written, but there’s still a great deal here to enjoy. This affectionate parody of football with the beloved Unseen University wizards is blessed with interesting characters new and familiar, but seems a little trivial in the context of his more recent works. Sadly, unless you have a love […]

  • Review: Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

    Painfully pretentious and drowning in a mess of its failed aspirations, it’s always a bad thing when an author becomes too fond of the sound of their own voice. Characters, ideas, feelings, and stories are lost under the weight of what I can only presume is Winterson’s creative vanity. While arguably intelligent she lacks the […]

  • Review: Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

    Literature Light. If you like your novels bland, insipid and unchallenging, Shadow of the Wind is probably for you. The prose is plain, the characters are two dimensional, a the plot – while it desperately aspires to be a thriller – is about as sleepy and predictable as they come. A couple of the characters […]

  • Review: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

    This is a most beautiful autobiography produced in a novel comic-book format. Alison Bechdel’s tale of growing up, her dysfunctional household, closeted homosexual father, and her own growing awareness of her lesbian identity is a touching and wonderfully rendered memoir of her early life. Insightful and fascinating from beginning to end, this is really worth […]

  • Review: The Ebony Tower by John Fowles

    Collection of five novellas from the genius that is Fowles. Stunningly brilliant, eloquent and profoundly intelligent. It is surely impossible not to learn from this man about both writing and life itself. This writer took literature towards a new frontier. Amazing.

  • Review: The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

    There is something deeply comforting about an epic novel you can immerse yourself into such as this. This window into Henry VIII’s court has been meticulously studied and rings very true. The Boleyn girls are particularly well drawn. This is history dramatized respectably, with its subjects given depth, life and credible motivations. It may not […]

  • John Fowles on his ‘first’ novel

    Interesting comments about writing from word-master John Fowles: In every way except that of mere publishing date, The Magus is a first novel. I began writing it in the early 1950s, and both narrative and mood went through countless transformations. […] But I had no coherent idea of where I was going, in life as […]

  • Cinema and Language and Shit

    It’s ‘Film Thursday!’, and today’s entry pompously considers what makes a film ‘good’; and particularly how we might appraise it from a linguistic perspective. Is the quality of a film merely a matter of subjective taste, or are there characteristics of cinema which can reliably suggest its merits? I might not actually answer these questions, […]

  • Ideas as ‘Art’

    Ideas do not make good films, or good art period. As in, ‘wouldn’t be be clever if we did this?’ Things are never clever when they’re trying to be clever. (Which is a good measure of modern art, which baffles so many. When it’s relying on the higher brain to applaud it, it is likely […]

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