Geordie Williamson

A long-lost novel sees the light after 40 years

  Some writers’ imaginations are roused most strongly by the view from their doorsteps. John Updike created a literary cosmos from the small-town, middle-class Protestant America of his youth. Irishman John McGahern spent a lifetime turning …

The clown v. the critic

Let’s prick the bubble of contemporaneity for once. Two lost books by a centenarian author were published in 2012. Happy Valley is the first reissue of Patrick White’s 1939 debut, a novel that was later so effectively quashed by its creator …

JM Coetzee - ‘Summertime’, 2009

Sonya’s Hartnett’s ‘Midnight Zoo’

On meeting Marie King, the heroine of Fiona McGregor’s fourth novel, I was reminded of Brett Whiteley’s painting of an ageing society hostess. His subject is impeccable at first glance – coiffed and glossy, as though time itself is being held back …

“In tragic life,” wrote George Meredith in Modern Love, a savage poetic account of the breakdown of his marriage, “No villain need be! Passions spin the plot.” Alex Miller’s eighth novel also tells the story of a marriage, in this instance …

Dave Eggers first met Abdulrahman Zeitoun during a visit to New Orleans, following the launch of Voices from the Storm, a volume of oral history published by McSweeney’s in late 2006. Zeitoun was just one of many narrators to reflect on Hurricane …