You can see all of my published reviews here.
Click the images to be taken to the original review (if the review has been posted online)
With juvenile curiosity and beyond-her-age bravery, Izzy explores the vast grounds.
IRISH TIMES
Jacob Kerr – The Green Man of Eshwood Hall
Felsen’s narrator is a struggling writer apparently based on Felsen himself. He, I suspect like Felsen, has a deep mistrust of the workings of the world.
REVIEW 31 BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Yuri Felsen – Deceit
Often the American author’s narrator inadvertently becomes the story
IRISH TIMES
Benjamin Markovits – The Sidekick
Simply, the task of writing the biography isn’t going to be an easy one. The writer has summoned ghosts from Pringle’s life to help
BRIXTON REVIEW OF BOOKS
Zoe Wicomb – Still Life
Two reviews of recently published collections of poetry featured in STAND.
STAND
Martina Evans – American Mules
A.B. Jackson – The Voyage of St. Brendan
‘With the final three volumes to follow, a new generation of readers will have the opportunity to discover Paustovsky.‘
IRISH TIMES
Konstantin Paustovsky – The Story of a Life
‘There is a lot to enjoy in these diary-like, poetic reflections on the spirit and nostalgia of life on the American road.‘
REVIEW 31 – BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2021
Moheb Soliman – HOMES
‘With user reviews of sex scenes, Arguelles seems to be wondering about what he could restore from the spectacle, fantasy or not: here, Arguelles might also be asking about his contribution to the society in which he works‘
REVIEW 31
Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles (trans. Kristine Ong Muslim) – Three Books
‘Although we might ask of the Creator why they find it so difficult to finish what they started, MacGregor seems to ask, why don’t we turn away from those who claim to have put us here in the first place, even when they don’t treat us well?‘
EXACTING CLAM
Jaimie Batchan – Siphonophore
‘The search for a venue to expose herself, psychologically and physically, has led her here, to Dr Seligman’s room.’
REVIEW 31
Katharina Volckmer – The Appointment
‘We’re taken on a quest to understand how we might engage with sublime forces beyond our existence, but then this turns into a more complicated examination of the imperceptible rules that structure the language we use every day.‘
Review 31
RACHEL MANN – A KINGDOM OF LOVE
‘Catherine the Great and the Small is not about how we recall the past, but about how the past can recall itself.
Brixton Review of Books (subscribers only)
OLJA KNEŽEVIĆ – CATHERINE THE GREAT AND THE SMALL
‘People — from Voltaire to vampires — are not confined to an unreachble past, but are within touching distance of people in the present.‘
Splice
Flesh-Coloured Dominoes – Zigmunds Skujiņš (trans. Kaija Straumanis)
Hong Kong Review of Books
‘…Lee’s poetry is a revelry in writing in and of a state of pre-position and “until-ness.”’
Unexpected Vanilla – Lee Hyemi (trans. So J.Lee)
‘I see a complex interplay of mirages and screens for other thoughts and possibilities that are trying and failing to break out of the narrator’s mind, rather than break in.’
Cleveland Review of Books
Ducks, Newburyport – Lucy Ellmann
‘Stone though is a city poet, and whilst we might be at sea here, the city and those half-built tower blocks don’t feel all that far away as they move and ‘wander’ to find a home.’
Bookmunch
Handling Stolen Goods – Degna Stone
‘..The sense of being on an island becomes a conceptual as well as a physical state of being.‘
Full Stop
Something Like Breathing – Angela Readman
‘Šlepikas invites readers to wonder whether the environment he depicts is primarily representative of a world overcoming war or, instead, a world in which the idea of “territories” is both a geopolitical and developmental term.’
Splice
In the Shadow of Wolves – Alvydas Šlepikas (trans. Romas Kinka)
‘As we enter the series of essays written, notably, at different points over fourteen years up until 2017, this anxiety of sound and its source and being in the historical moment, does not disband.’
Bookmunch
Grimspound and Inhabiting Art – Rod Mengham
‘[W]hether you believe the scream that might enable the narrator to look “straight into the eyes of her family’s insanity” has been expressed or somebody’s found a lid and stifled it again, is down to your analysis.’
Full Stop
The Oblique Place – Caterina Pascual Söderbaum (trans. Frank Perry)
‘For past to be prologue some damage needs to be settled, and for this reason the novel feels encapsulated within a state of inertia.’
The Island Review
The Tempest – Steve Sem Sandberg (trans. Anna Paterson)
‘You begin to get a sense that this contingency on structure might be existentially impeding him, like the detective’s protocol, or the academic’s research paper; the answers might not be conducive to the structures we have now.’
Review 31
Andrew Wynn Owen – The Multiverse
‘Zebra’s refracted and displaced journey is, in some part, how she correlates experience, connects words and events, like any book…’
Review 31
Call Me Zebra – Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
‘…When Bloom remarks ‘Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute…Thousands every house. Too many in the world’ we could have an epigraph for Ryan’s novel.’
Bookmunch
From a Low and Quiet Sea – Donal Ryan
‘In this new collection of essays and journalism.. Amis continues this concern with the duplicitous nature of language that inadvertently seems split between exploring notions of communion and communication.‘
Bookmunch
The Rub of Time – Martin Amis
‘The ability to allegorise seamlessly then with the environment does not make this a simple task, as dark, gothic imagery entwines with lyrics that explore subject matter like schizophrenia.’
Singapore Review of Books
Desolate Market – Julian Turner
‘Unnikrishnan’s book is fragmented and elusive and indeed only temporarily focusing on characters and stories…’‘
Necessary Fiction
Temporary People – Deepak Unnikrishnan
‘His detachment does not remain a figurative matter, but is dealt with again and again by Azaústre.‘
Necessary Fiction
The Swimmers -Joaquín Pérez Azaústre (translated by Lucas Lyndes)
“There is the insinuation of something or someone else occupying the room, which is for Phillips where it began, and where it appears he wants it to remain: the someone, the person.”
Bookmunch
Adam Phillips – One Way and Another
‘Chatwin realises that it is only through ‘now’ that we can begin to make sense of our world. ‘
Bookmunch
Bruce Chatwin – the Novels
© Liam Bishop, 2021. All rights reserved.
Liam Bishop 