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Dear Marghanita, The Victorian Chaise Longue (1953) follows Melanie Langdon, a young married woman who is recovering from tuberculosis. When the novel opens, we are somewhere in the…… Read more “She was shuddering in a body long ago dead”
Tag: psychological thriller
Would they really spend their lives watching the street from inside their portraits?
Dear Norah, People in the Room (2018, tr. Charlotte Whittle. Original: Personas en la sala, 1950) is a slow exercise in estrangement: when we least expect, we…… Read more “Would they really spend their lives watching the street from inside their portraits?”
Everything, by virtue of coming into existence, is doomed to pass
Dear Ricarda, The Last Summer (2016, tr. Jamie Bulloch. Original: Der letzte Sommer, 1910) feels like a treasure chest full of letters. As we read through them,…… Read more “Everything, by virtue of coming into existence, is doomed to pass”
Kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths
Dear Henry, The Heart of the Matter (1948) is a book about a man caught in the vortex of a moral crisis – and, ultimately, torn apart and…… Read more “Kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths”
The all-seeing eye
Dear Claire, In Bitter Orange (2018), we are made accomplices of the main character’s voyeurism, caught in a claustrophobic atmosphere that grows ever more disturbing as we…… Read more “The all-seeing eye”
O cursed human voice, violin of flesh and blood,
Dear Violet, The short-story “A Wicked Voice”, published in the collections Hauntings (1890) and The Virgin of the Seven Daggers (1962, posthumously published), combines elements of a Faustian pact,…… Read more “O cursed human voice, violin of flesh and blood,”
Hardness was probably his most distinctive quality
Dear Laura, Reading your novel Breathing into Marble, tr. Marija Marcinkute (2016. Original: Kvėpavimas į marmurą, 2006) feels like being trapped in a room of glass: it’s…… Read more “Hardness was probably his most distinctive quality”
To disentangle true from false
Dear Delphine, Based on a True Story (2017, tr. George Miller. Original: D’aprés une histoire vraie, 2015) is an atmospheric book that revolves around a woman who…… Read more “To disentangle true from false”
One gets the criminals one deserves
Dear Amélie, The Enemy’s Cosmetique (Cosmétique de l’ennemi, 2001, not translated into English yet) reads like an ouroboros, a snail swallowing its own tail: in a sequence of…… Read more “One gets the criminals one deserves”
Strange can be quite normal
Dear Samanta, Your novel Fever Dream (2017), translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (Distanca de Rescate, 2014) takes the form of a conversation between a woman…… Read more “Strange can be quite normal”
She sensed a scream beneath the silence,
Review: The Beautiful Bureaucrat, by Helen Phillips
Dear Helen,
It is difficult to pin down your novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat (2015): a dystopia that reads like a thriller with brief incursions into horror, literary modernism and satire? It’s hard to say. But, by trying too much, and rushing to the tidy end, it might have fallen short of being great in any of these categories.
Everyone was fleeing and everything was temporary
Dear Anna, Do you know this feeling we have when something terrible happens in a dream and we must scream or run, but we find ourselves suddenly…… Read more “Everyone was fleeing and everything was temporary”
The walls of her home were falling down, there was no refuge
Dear Elisabeth, Your novel The Blank Wall (1947) is a gripping psychological thriller, in which a housewife get entangled in a web of murder, blackmail and pressing…… Read more “The walls of her home were falling down, there was no refuge”
I looked like a girl you’d expect to see on a city bus
Dear Ottessa, The protagonist of your novel Eileen (2015) is one of the strangest yet most endearing literary misfits who have crossed my reading paths in recent…… Read more “I looked like a girl you’d expect to see on a city bus”
