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Reviews
Reviews that do not appear in the magazine... Watch this space- It is regularly updated!
A Welsh Witch, A Romance of Rough Places (Allen Raine) (Issue: 100)NEW
A Welsh Witch is a novel by Allen Raine (Anne Adeliza Puddicombe), originally published in 1902, that charts the progress from adolescence to maturity of four young people from a Cardiganshire fishing village. A mixture of social prejudice and misplaced pride causes three of the friends to enter into romantic misalliances with one another.read more...
All the Souls, Stories of the Living and the Dead (Mary-Ann Constantine) (Issue: 100)NEW
Apparently, the new ‘big thing’ in literature is ‘sick-lit’, a genre aimed at teenagers who would prefer Twilight if Edward happened to be dying of Marfan Syndrome or suchlike. Over the past decade, I’ve noticed a parallel surge in what you could term historical sick- lit for adults.read more...
Baader-Meinhof and the Novel, Narrative of the Nation/Fantasies of the Revolution, 1970-2010 (Julian Preece) (Issue: 100)NEW
When Ulrike Meinhof scrambled out of the library window of the Institute for Social Research in West Berlin in May 1970, leaving behind a haze of gun- smoke and a severely wounded guard, she crossed a threshold from her past – as a journalist, a theoretician, a citizen, a mother – to her future as a terrorist, an outlaw, a martyr. The event set off resonances that have been echoing in the modern political imagination ever since. Julian Preece, in this powerful and lucid study, examines the subsequent history of the myth, with particular reference toGerman literature.
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Bird, Blood, Snow (Cynan Jones) (Issue: 100)NEW
Having to deal with such a problematic source text as Peredur, I was rooting for Cynan Jones even before I read his reworking of the tale. Peredur, one of three Arthurian romances in the Mabinogion collection, is essentially a coming of age story. It tells of Peredur’s maturity and victory over otherworldly obstacles – necessitated by the mythical layer of sovereignty – in order that he may claim his rightful kingdom.read more...
Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape (Jay Griffiths) (Issue: 100)NEW
In her award-winning Wild, Jay Griffiths described her experience of a range of cultures whose relationship to the earth implicitly challenges the greedy materialism that threatens their existence. Now, in Kith, she presents us with another threatened world: the world of childhood.read more...
My Heart on My Sleeve, 14 Stories of Love from Wales (Janet Thomas (ed) & Cathryn A Charnell-White (trans & ed)) (Issue: 100)NEW
Honno’s latest anthology contains fourteen ‘stories of love’: ten have been specially commissioned from some of Wales’ best contemporary women writers, two have appeared in previous Honno collections, and two are commissioned translations of short stories written in Welsh which are published in English here for the first time.read more...
RS Thomas, Serial Obsessive (M Wynn Thomas) (Issue: 100)NEW
While he lived, those who admired RS Thomas’ poetry tended to avoid discussion of the contradictions that ran in fault lines through the poems and autobiographical prose, and by implication through the life. The feeling was perhaps that he had enemies enough ready to take him to task.read more...
Say Goodbye to the Boys (Mari Stead Jones) (Issue: 100)NEW
Basing this review on a proof with no cover, I went in blind. I spent the first third of the book asking, What kind of book is this? What’s it trying to be? Because all I was getting was: 1. It’s a bit Welsh; 2. It’s a bit 1940s...read more...
Séan Tyrone: A Symphony or Horrors (Mark Ryan) (Issue: 100)NEW
The blurb of Mark Ryan’s first, and now only, novel tells me that he was in Adam and the Ants. This was the first band I went to see, all punked up, at the age of fourteen or so, in Liverpool Royal Court, although apparently Ryan was kicked out in 1977 and so wouldn’t have been in the line-up I saw. The author lived in Cardiff part of his life, wrote plays and children’s books and became something of a maverick figure in the city’s cultural landscape...read more...
Snowdon, The Story of a Mountain (Jim Perrin) (Issue: 100)NEW
For a book ostensibly tied to a specific locality, Jim Perrin’s Snowdon covers a lot of ground. The mountain itself stands at the centre of the narrative, an iconic presence in its own right, but Perrin’s excursions into matters linguistic, folkloric, botanical, archaeological, sociological and psychological reveal a broad and often complex understanding of his subject.read more...
The Museum of Disappearing Sounds (Zoë Skoulding) (Issue: 100)NEW
Several years ago, I presented a conference paper with what I thought was the satisfyingly witty title ‘Entitled to Mean’. Its thrust was the significance of titles – chiefly of poems. It is therefore important to me that Skoulding calls her new collection The Museum of Disappearing Sounds, but the poem that names the collection is called ‘The Museum for Disappearing Sounds’ (my emphasis). This is a difference which resonates throughout the collection...read more...
The Village (Nikita Lalwani) (Issue: 100)NEW
Having given away £10,000 in literary prize money to human rights organisation Liberty, Cardiff author Nikita Lalwani is clearly a woman with a conscience. The Village, her second novel, is a book of ethical enquiry that unpicks the liberal anxieties of its protagonist, Ray, a twenty-seven-year-old woman ‘of North Indian origin’, living in the UK and working as a film-maker for the BBC.read more...
Warriors (David Lloyd) (Issue: 99)NEW
Warriors is a poetry collection by David Lloyd that is preoccupied with the fights faced by all, be they grand or subtle, physical or psychological.read more...
Welsh Periodicals in English, 1882-2012 (Malcolm Ballin) (Issue: 100)NEW
Malcolm Ballin has made something of a name for himself as a researcher of periodicals, particularly little magazines and miscellanies such as those contained in this study.read more...
Then Spree (Nia Davies) (Issue: 99)
Sheffield-Welsh poet Nia Davies' debut collection acts as a versifying ear, nose and throat doctor, peering into the head’s cavities and inner organs for inspiration, claims Dai Georgeread more...
Beyond the Pampas, In Search of Patagonia (Imogen Rhia Herrad) (Issue: 99)
German author explores ideas of community and self among the Welsh and indigenous peoples of Patagonia (Y Wladfa).read more...
Patagonia – Byd Arall/Otro Mundo/Another World (Ed Gold) (Issue: 99)
Patagonia is a compilation of photographs taken between 2006 and 2008, documenting Welsh history and cultural life in Argentina.read more...
Astonishment (Anne Stevenson) (Issue: 99)
Seldom, in the everyday world of poetry, is a collection as astonishing as this.read more...
A Hunger Artist and Other Stories (Franz Kafka, trans. Joyce Crick) (Issue: 99)
Amanda Hopkinson concludes this great author merits a translator who meets the needs of each new ageread more...
A Radiance (Bethany W Pope) (Issue: 99)
Sarah Coles admires an original, rich and deeply felt poetry collectionread more...
After Brock (Paul Binding) (Issue: 99)
Jeremy Hughes enjoys a novel of parallel worlds, both paternal and environmentalread more...
Black Skin, Blue Books: African Americans and Wales, 1845-1945 (Daniel G WIlliams) (Issue: 99)
Carl Plasa lauds an authoritative, dazzingly erudite major addition to black Atlantic studiesread more...
Cardiff After Dark (Maciej Dakowicz) (Issue: 99)
Kaite O'Reilly admires a photographic Gin Lane with fewer clothes, more jokes, and no proselytising.read more...
Flirting at the Funeral (Chris Keil) (Issue: 99)
Katherine Stansfield praises a Portuguese-set novel of materialism, memory and the financial crisisread more...
Ice (Gillian Clarke) (Issue: 99)
The rural of these poems is no country Jasmine Donahaye recognisesread more...
Murmur (Menna Elfyn (trans. Elin ap Hywel, Paul Henry, Gillian Clarke)) (Issue: 99)
Menna Elfyn's latest bilingual collection proves this poet's continuing exploration of dualities, writes Rhiannon Marksread more...
P L A C E (Jorie Graham) (Issue: 99)
Jem Poster assesses a flawed collection by a serious literary talentread more...
Poet to Poet: Edward Thomas' Letters to Walter de la Mare (Judy Kendall (ed)) (Issue: 99)
This correspondence reveals a literary relationship which was slightly out of sync, argues Jem Posterread more...
The Ninjas (Jane Yeh) (Issue: 99)
Sarah Coles believes in this unsettling, funny and wonderful collectionread more...
The Roaring Boys (John Barnie) (Issue: 99)
Kym Martindale enjoys a poetry collection of exquisite irony and pathos on death, air guitar and other life-changing mattersread more...
Scars (Juan José Saer, Translation, Steve Dolph) (Issue: 98)
This is a book that demands to be re-read. And because it is – for the most part – a brilliant piece of writing, I’ll probably acquiesce.read more...
Loudness (Judy Brown) (Issue: 98)
This poetry collection, shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best First Collection, 2011, and the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, 2012, is set amid grey concrete, city streets and close rooms, where human contact is often ‘wedged into narrow spaceread more...
You, Me and the Birds (Alan Kellerman) (Issue: 98)
There is excellence in You, Me and the Birds, plenty of it, and some truly gorgeous moments.read more...
Camelion (Richard Poole) (Issue: 98)
Gods, vampires and animals all make an appearance in this ambitious amalgam of verse.read more...
Beasts of the Southern Wild, Film Review (Issue: 98)
This Academy Award- nominated film tells the story of Hushpuppy, a five-year old girl growing up on a small island known as The Bathtub, which is under constant threat of flooding and where the people are happy despite being poor.read more...
Bistro (Kate North) (Issue: 98)
Bistro, Kate North’s debut collection of poetry, invites the reader to embark on a unique journey through her world.read more...
The Mind-Body Problem (Katha Pollitt ) (Issue: 98)
Reading this collection left reviewer Pippa Marland with the lingering feeling of having been on a journey from which she emerged subtly changed – sadder, wiser, but somehow ‘lit within’.read more...
Ras Olaf Harri Selwyn (Tony Bianchi ) (Issue: 98)
Ffion Lindsay reviews prizewinning author Tony Bianchi's fourth Welsh-language title about pensioners, running and the Mau Mau war.read more...
Knock ’em Cold, Kid (Elaine Morgan) (Issue: 97)
Elaine Morgan’s remarkable success in overcoming barriers of class, national and gender discrimination, and her willingness to polemicise on behalf of the Aquatic Ape Theory, suggest a degree of travail and a steely side to her character that this her aread more...
Leaving the Atocha Station (Ben Lerner) (Issue: 97)
Leaving the Atocha Station has earned praise from Paul Auster, Hanri Kurzu and Jonathan Franzen. Perhaps what makes this novel timely is its charm, intelligence and humour.read more...
The Bridle (Meryl Pugh) (Issue: 97)
The twenty-four poems in Meryl Pugh’s The Bridle are centered on themes of storytelling, memory, myth, the juxtaposition of body and mind and what it means to have been born female.read more...
Cheval 5 (Aida Birch, Alan Perry (eds)) (Issue: 97)
An anthology of poetry and prose submitted for the 2012 Terry Hetherington Award.read more...
Aria/Anika (Sudeep Sen) (Issue: 97)
Despite its preoccupation with categorisation and precision, Aria/Anika comes across as a mishmash, a casting of sticks all higgledy-piggledy, a complex arrangement, but at its best it is a work of startling beauty and will add lustre to the career of oneread more...
Thrown into Nature (Milen Ruskov) (Issue: 97)
With a wonderful carefree nature to its voice and a fantastic economy of prose, Thrown into Nature is a lucid mirror to money, evil and charlatanism from one of Bulgaria’s greatest living writers.read more...
Homuncular Misfit (David Greenslade) (01/11/2012)
David Greenslade has lived a varied and unorthodox life, and his latest collection of poems, Homuncular Misfit, shows it. Subjects vary from Welsh valleys to Tibetan humming bowls, and descriptions of the Severn Bridge juxtapose with Jabal Ahkdar (a mountread more...
Married Love (Tessa Hadley) (Issue: 97)
Hadley’s technical skill is matched by her style, which is delicate yet assured, complex yet beautifully incisive.read more...
The Marriage Plot (Jeffrey Eugenides) (Issue: 97)
Jeffrey Eugenides has cultivated a reputation as one of the safest hands in modern fiction, and his new novel The Marriage Plot topped international best-seller lists and won the 2011 Salon Book Award.read more...
When I Was A Child I Read Books (Marilynne Robinson) (Issue: 97)
Pulitzer prizewinner Marilynne Robinson, in her latest collection of essays, warns against ‘retreating from the cultivation and celebrating of learning and of beauty, by dumbing down....'read more...
This September Sun (Bryony Rheam) (Issue: 97)
A unique insight into a post-colonial country, personalising a political struggle from the perspective of three generations of Rhodesians and capturing the fractious nature of life in decline.read more...
Clueless Dogs/White Walls (Rhian Edwards/Herbert Williams) (Issue: 97)
While Clueless Dogs, despite its nomination, did not win the recently announced Forward Best First Collection prize, this is hardly likely to stall Edwards’ promising career.read more...
Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam (Eds Todd Swift and Kim Lockwood ) (Issue: 97)
Lung Jazz is certainly a book with ambition coming out of its ears: 153 poets; 153 poems.read more...
Here and the Water (Sarah Coles) (Issue: 97)
I loved this book; I read it from start to finish, sometimes rereading a poem three or four times before turning to the next.read more...
Chinaman (Shehan Karunatilaka) (Issue: 97)
Winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize 2012, this fictional autobiography follows WG Karunasena, a retired Sri Lankan sportswriter, as he nears the end of his life.read more...
The Prince of Wails (Stephen Knight) (21/08/2012)
Stephen Knight’s latest collection of poetry is strung between these themes: the loss of the poet’s father and the former’s own late parenthood...read more...
The Coward’s Tale (Vanessa Gebbie) (14/08/2012)
It is a paradox of Welsh writing in English that the person arguably considered the greatest of our writers, Dylan Thomas, is the one whose influence everyone tries to shake off...read more...
The Life of Rebecca Jones (Angharad Price trans. Lloyd Jones) (07/08/2012)
Angharad Price’s acclaimed novel of 2002, O! Tyn y Gorchudd, is here given to readers of English in the translation of Lloyd Jones as The Life of Rebecca Jones.read more...
Conquest (Zoë Brigley) (31/07/2012)
‘[They beg me to recount it all – / to tell their stories, my story, and I do.’]This is Zoë Brigley, setting herself a poetic quest, whilst on a residency at the Brontë parsonage.
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Regeneration (Meirion Jordan) (24/07/2012)
Regeneration is a work based on Llyfr Coch Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch along with the Tales of Arthur and his court as recounted by Mallory...read more...
Jonah Jones, An Artist’s Life (Peter Jones) (17/07/2012)
Biography of Jonah Jones, sculptor, engraver, essayist and novelist.read more...
Poets from Sardinia (Michele Pinna (ed)) (09/07/2012)
Diarmuid Johnson concludes that 'compromise is a lesser sin than imperialism in this volume of translation of poetry from Sardinia from Cinnamon.read more...
The Happy-go-lucky Morgans (Edward Thomas) (20/06/2012)
Edward Thomas' 'lopsided', Laugharne-set novel was among the prose extracted for use in his poetry, on the advice of Robert Frostread more...
The Sister of the Artist (Dai Vaughan) (18/06/2012)
Last fiction title by the late Dai Vaughan.read more...
The Man Who Rained (Ali Shaw ) (24/05/2012)
Elsa comes to Thunderstown and falls in love with Finn Munro, a man whose body is made out of weather.read more...
Funderland (Nigel Jarrett) (11/05/2012)
An excellent first offering, giving a thought provoking series of wry, often wistful fresh angles on the fragility of relationships.read more...
The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals (Wendy Jones) (30/04/2012)
A young undertaker in 1920s Narberth makes the foolish mistake of asking a woman he does not love to marry him....read more...
Swamplandia (Karen Russell) (25/04/2012)
Ava is the youngest member of the famous Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty....read more...
The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen (Lindsay Ashford) (17/04/2012)
Was Jane Austen murdered? Novel by crime author unearths research to investigate her claim that Austen was poisoned by arsenicread more...
The Beautiful Indifference (Sarah Hall) (28/03/2012)
Debut short story collection by Man Booker and Orange nominee Sarah Hallread more...
The Best British Poetry 2011 (Ed Roddy Lumsden) (13/03/2012)
Salt's selection by Roddy Lumsden of the best British Poetry of 2011 published in magazines and webzinesread more...
The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge (Patricia Duncker) (12/03/2012)
This literary crime thriller of ideas is sharply written but overloaded with description.read more...
Far South (David Enrique Spellman) (05/03/2012)
Beautifully written in the lucid, direct style that has become the hallmark of some of the best crime fiction...read more...
Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee (Megan Boyle) (31/01/2012)
Megan Boyle's debut poetry collectionread more...
Tair Rheol Anrhefn (Daniel Davies) (11/01/2012)
Daniel Davies's fifth book and winner of the 2011 Daniel Owen Memorial Prizeread more...
Midwinterblood (Marcus Sedgwick) (10/01/2012)
This latest Young Adult novel from Marcus Sedgwick has a most unusual plot construction...read more...
Blow on a Dead Man's Embers (Mari Strachan) (09/12/2011)
Mari Strachan's second novel, is set in a quiet Welsh village just after the First World War.read more...
The Meeting Point (Lucy Caldwell) (05/12/2011)
The winner of this year University of Wales Dylan Thomas prize, announced last month, is an old-fashioned book. This was my first impression of Lucy Caldwell's The Meeting Point, which the novelty of it being my first novel on an e-reader (Sony)read more...
Dark Matter (Michelle Paver) (30/11/2011)
Having never actually read a contemporary ghost story, I wondered whether people's assertions that 'books are scarier than films' was in fact true.read more...
And God Created Burton (Tom Rubython) (16/11/2011)
This latest biography by Tom Rubython attempts to delve into the life of arguably the most successful Welsh actor of all time. And God Created Burton takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through history...read more...
The City With Horns (Tamar Yoseloff) (08/11/2011)
This review focuses on the main sequence in this collection. Several poems in The City With Horns explore the literal and metaphorical ways we grasp at understanding.read more...
The Sense of an Ending (Julian barnes) (21/10/2011)
The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes' latest novel and the book that (finally) this week won him the Man Booker Prize, is a thin book impregnated with fat ideas....read more...
Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-personality (Elias Aboujaoude) (12/10/2011)
The internet has been in popular use in the UK for 20 years. Now that is has, essentially, come of age, a string of books has been released examining the effects of the internet on humanity.read more...
Love Child (Herbert Williams) (09/09/2011)
There has never been a more apt time than now to read Herbert Williams' most recent novel :Love Child.read more...
The Empty Family and Touchy Subjects (Colm Tobin, Emma Donoghue) (19/08/2011)
On paper, Colm Toibin and Emma Donoghue are writers working very much in the same style..read more...
The Tiger's Wife (Téa Obreht ) (11/08/2011)
As I went to Waterstone's to ask for a copy of the 2011 Orange Prize Winner, the shop assistant rather anxiously informed me that they only had three copies to begin with and that these copies had all sold out within a day...read more...
The Captain's Tower, Seventy Poets Celebrate Bob Dylan at Seventy (edited by Phil Bowen, Damian Furniss and David Woolley) (06/08/2011)
I jumped at the chance to review The Captain's Tower: Seventy Poets Celebrate Bob Dylan at Seventy (edited by Phil Bowen, Damian Furniss and David Woolley). Who wouldn't?read more...
A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan) (23/07/2011)
Much has been made of the structure that author Jennifer Egan employs in her Pulitzer- Prizewinning and Orange-nominated novel A Visit from the Goon Squad...read more...
Un Ddinas Dau Fyd (Llwyd Owen) (30/06/2011)
As a confirmed Llwyd Owen addict, I was gagging for this latest offering, Un Ddinas Dau Fyd...read more...
The Psychopath Test (Jon Ronson) (24/06/2011)
There are three easy steps to falling into the psychopath trap...read more...
Moor Music and Zen Cymru (Mike Jenkins, Peter Finch) (15/06/2011)
Moor Music by Mike Jenkins and Zen Cymru by Peter Finch, two volumes put out by Seren last year, share a lot in common...read more...
Grace Williams Says it Loud (Emma Henderson) (13/06/2011)
Grace Williams is keeping me from sleeping...read more...
Africa Junction (Ginny Bailey) (07/06/2011)
Even those Westerners who have 'lived in Africa on and off for most of [their] lives,' like Ginny Bailey's character Louis are 'wary of talking politics'...read more...
The Breaking of Eggs and A Kind of Intimacy (Jim Powell, Jenn Ashworth) (19/04/2011)
The Culture Show recently declared twelve novelists as the ‘Best Newcomers of 2011’...read more...
The Woman who Thought too Much (Joanne Limburg) (27/03/2011)
This memoir deserves much more space..read more...
Help me, Jacques Cousteau and True Things about Me (Gil Adamson and Deborah Kay Davies) (21/03/2011)
Voice-driven narrative is what I thought I liked. It's what Alcemi, my fiction imprint, was seeking among the writers of Wales...read more...
The Fluorescent Jacket (Roshi Fernando) (10/03/2011)
There are several moments in Homesick , Fernando's composite novel in which this story was orginally published, where tables turn...read more...
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