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“Reading the Girls” List Version 1.3
About a fortnight ago I asked for help. In response to writer Maureen Johnson’s convincing polemic against the way that publishers and critics present female writers I asked, “Can you add to the list...
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A Rebecca West Reading Plan
I’ve long been intimidated, though I’ve never read any of her writing, by Rebecca West. This intimidation, I suspect, is because I know that I’ll read her thousand page plus masterpiece Black Lamb and...
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Hoppé Exhibition at the Portrait Gallery
Rebecca West, as photographed by ‘Edwardian Modernist’ photographer E.O. Hoppé. West donned the head-dress to conceal wet hair. The exhibition, open today, at the Portrait Gallery is superb, and...
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Essays About Moms and Cats
I had planned to skip Rebecca West’s ‘Why my Mother was Frightened of Cats.’ Essays about mothers are normally too mawkish; combine mothers and cats and nausea is inevitable. The brilliance and humour...
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Don’t You Loathe Comedic Writing?
No genre makes my skin crawl more than comedic writing. I don’t mean those puerile books like The More I See of Men the More I Love My Dog…. that congregate by the tills in bookshops, impulse purchases...
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A Truly Original Writer
Customarily I expect each book I read to suggest subsequent reading material. Reading Simone de Beauvoir offered up André Gide and William Faulkner, and also lead indirectly to Bernard-Henri Lévy and...
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A Source of Embarrassment by A. L. Barker
Asked of her admiration for A. L. Barker, Rebecca West said: I think she’s the best novelist now [1981] writing, not always, but I think The Middling is a magnificent novel. And A Source of...
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Jessa Crispin’s The Dead Ladies Project
Somewhere around St. Petersburg and W. Somerset Maugham, it became clear that The Dead Ladies Project isn’t to be shoehorned into any of the recognisable classifications that exist for contemporary...
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