Alys Denby

Alys Denby is the Opinion and Features editor of City AM

Friday

Alys Denby

Good riddance to Sally Rooney

From our UK edition

Sally Rooney must be delighted that her novels are being pulled from British shelves over her support for Palestine Action. This woman is never happier than when denying people the chance to read her books or those of others. She has previously refused to allow her work to be translated into Hebrew and has brought the Edinburgh and Hay book festivals to the brink of financial ruin by backing a boycott of their main sponsor, Baillie Gifford. Unlike many of her fellow authors, Rooney is successful enough not to have to actually sell books to make a living, and good on her. But British readers should celebrate too, since we are now relieved of any feeling of responsibility to read her.

Tuesday

Alys Denby

Americans can’t write funny novels

If I recommended you an American novel called Stoner, what would you think? You’d probably assume it was some hallucinogen-inspired rubbish from the 1960s by someone who once met Allen Ginsberg. You wouldn’t think it was a plangent, devastating story about the failed life of an English literature academic. That’s because, if a campus novel like this were British, it would have been written by Kingsley Amis, Howard Jacobson or Evelyn Waugh. It would never have had such a terrible title and would also be comic rather than achingly sad. That’s the difference between British and American novels: American novels aren’t funny.

Saturday

Alys Denby

Frida Kahlo is a Tory icon

From our UK edition

When Theresa May coughed into her hand during her painful conference speech back in 2017, adorning her wrist was a chunky Frida Kahlo bracelet. Some left-wingers were outraged that a Tory would ‘appropriate’ the image of ‘a Communist, bisexual artist who was also a disabled woman of colour’. The Guardian described it as ‘a surprising statement’ given that Kahlo ‘spent her career concerned with the plight of the impoverished, our connectedness to self, nature and the universe, the relationship between pain and identity, and imagined, one day, we could live in a classless society’. She was as much a materialist as a Marxist But I believe it was an apt choice for my fellow Conservative. Kahlo is a capitalist icon, a right-wing poster girl.