Beautiful movement

Running has been a part of me since I was in my early twenties—not competitive running, but thrashing along rural … More

Entertaining contrivance

What little I’ve read of Neal Stephenson’s work has made me want to read more of it, but I don’t … More

A warm voice in a cold world

When I wrote down my thoughts in response to La Belle Sauvage, which is the first volume of Philip Pullman’s … More

Sweet reasonableness

Having had occasion to excavate some of my East Anglian roots in response to watching The Dig recently, I was … More

Expert hand-holding

Worldbuilder, storyteller—these are Philip Pullman’s great strengths for me. As a ‘novel-maker’ he’s stuck in a rather old-fashioned, comfortable mode … More

Sharing

Rachel Roddy’s second book is full of anecdotes and recollections, little narrative vignettes about her immediate household, the extended Sicilian … More

Thresholds

We cross thresholds, we readers. Each book we read is entered through a portal, and marking those portals—projected onto the … More

A game of madness

I’ve never paid particular attention to Nicholas Hawksmoor’s famous London churches, although I am familiar with some of them. I … More

One face in a thousand

In Rhetorics of Fantasy, her important structural taxonomy of fantasy literature, Farah Mendlesohn identifies four key types of fantasy, defined … More