“Her stories know so much about the world—the small ways we betray the people we love and the horrors that are so outsized they’d be absurd if they weren’t crushing—yet Beasts & Children is never cynical or defeatist.”
“The Devil in the Marshalsea is anything but a quaint period piece, a costume drama in prose. There are a few well-stuffed, beribboned bodices, but this novel is a grim tale of an eighteenth-century crime (owing money) and punishment (prison for same).”
“Trying to see the world as others might seems like an act of respect to me—so long as it isn’t done cynically or sloppily.” Skip Horack talks to Tom Bennitt about work, religion, and history in his fiction.
This week’s feature is Peter Murphy’s new novel, The River and Enoch O’Reilly, which was published this week by Mariner Books. Murphy is a writer from Enniscorthy in Co. Wexford, Ireland. His first novel John the Revelator was published in the UK and Ireland by Faber & Faber and in the US by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and was nominated for the 2011 IMPAC literary award, shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Book Awards and the Kerry Group Fiction prize. His second novel, Shall We Gather at the River (2013), is published by Faber in Ireland and the UK and as The […]
Peter Murphy offers us a fictional review of an imaginary anthology of songs about the Rua river, which was removed from his new novel, The River and Enoch O’Reilly, at the draft stage. It publishes tomorrow!
Germany’s literary superstar Günter Grass is obsessed with the past. His second memoir, The Box, challenges readers to distinguish between fact and fiction in latter half of the author’s life. His unconventional approach might undermine the memoir form, but the result is a compelling account of Grass’ compulsion to write.
