Creation Lake is one of the best books of the year
From our US edition
Creation Lake is a book about how humans deal with what is deemed to be Other
Philip Womack
Philip Womack is a writer, an ex-private tutor and a parent.
Monday
Tuesday
In defence of the personal statement
Ucas, the organisation in charge of university admissions, has announced that it’s bidding bye-bye to a crucial teen rite of passage. It is killing the personal statement. No longer will admissions tutors beetle their brows over flowing paragraphs about when you built an orphanage in Malawi using only a spoon, or how really, really passionate you
Tuesday
James Shapiro’s timely account of the rise and fall of an influential public theater
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The Playbook is a dramatic tale, full of overreaching ambition, dastardly plots, embattled heroes and last-minute reversals
Nostalgia for old, rundown coastal Sussex
Sally Bayley’s The Green Lady is a beguiling, experimental mixture of biography, fiction and family history. In her excellent memoir Girl with Dove (2018), she wrote about her neglected childhood in the coastal Sussex town of Littlehampton. Here she returns to the same locality, but considers her forebears, embroidering episodes from her own rackety childhood
Monday
John Freeman’s Hit and Run is gorgeously crafted
From our US edition
This is a work about significant moments, glittering with reflections and refractions
Wednesday
The sad decline of writing
Sometimes, it’s not just bombs, viruses and elections that make you worry about the future of humanity. A recent survey, commissioned by the National Literacy Trust, reveals that fewer than one third of eight-to-18-year-olds enjoys writing as a hobby. If you’re thinking that I’m being wistful about fountain pens (‘whatever happened to ink blots?’) you’re
Wednesday
What drives the Shakespeare conspiracy theories?
As predictably as the tides, as welcome as a pebble in your shoe, the bogus question of ‘who actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays?’ is in the news again. Jodi Picoult, the writer, thinks that Emilia Bassano (aka Aemilia Lanier), the daughter of a musician, must have had a hand in them, because, she says, Juliet is
Thursday
The deluge: Rishi Sunak’s election gamble
53 min listen
It’s a bumper edition of The Edition this week. After Rishi Sunak called a surprise – and perhaps misguided – snap election just a couple of hours after our press deadline, we had to frantically come up with a new digital cover. To take us through a breathless day in Westminster and the fallout of
Why is the government making it harder to get an au pair?
You will have heard, I am sure, of the Conservatives’ recent largesse towards working parents, as their ‘free’ childcare policy has been much publicised. Fifteen hours a week for your kid, from nine months old to the grand age of four. You may not, however, have seen the new rules governing au pairs, which came into
Wednesday
Salman Rushdie’s memoir is a devastating and powerful account of near-death
From our US edition
The writer remains strong, his determination to write a beacon for anyone who cares about freedom of thought and speech
Thursday
Parents won’t take Labour’s attack on private schools lying down
As citizens of an orderly state, we allow ourselves to be taxed. We fork out for council tax so that local services function. When it comes to income tax, some may grit their teeth, but we hope it gets funnelled towards the greater good. We accept, though perhaps dislike, ‘sin taxes’ on cigarettes and booze.
Thursday
The frustrating rise of celebrities ‘writing’ children’s books
From our US edition
When you give a child a book by a celebrity, you are feeding their minds with advertising
Thursday
Back from the beyond: The Book of Love, by Kelly Link, reviewed
Kelly Link’s short-story collections bewilder and delight with their sideways takes on fantasy tropes. People might turn into cats, but they do it while texting emojis (dancing lady, unicorn, happy face). In The Book of Love, Link’s debut novel, she revels in upholding and upturning the genre’s conventions. Mainlining Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and with
Wednesday
Wolves of Winter focuses on the brutality of the past
From our US edition
Dan Jones confidently evokes the whorehouses, the illnesses, the death and depravity
Friday
Two excellent books that offer new insight into The Iliad
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A new translation and critical study explore the legendary poem’s numinous spell
Wednesday
Emily Carroll’s new graphic novel plays on our deepest fears
From our US edition
A Guest in the House is a beautifully plotted study of the madness of isolation, steeped in the tropes of fairy tale and horror
Friday
Zadie Smith’s latest novel is glittering, grand and powerful
From our US edition
The Fraud is a consciously (but not self-consciously) literary novel
Monday
William Boyd’s latest novel is immense fun
From our US edition
In The Romantic , it’s as if Boyd has distilled the essence of centuries of novel-writing
Sunday
Men at War examines homosexuality among World War Two soldiers
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Luke Turner’s essential thesis is that the war opened up a brief time of sexual liberation for men
Sunday
Tom Hanks should stick to acting
From our US edition
The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece is as clumsy as its plodding title
