Geoff brought me a gift from his day volunteering at Oxfam to include in my mining books. It is a pamphlet published in 1990 by Durham Arts Association. It charts encounters by a retired miner, of 40 years work down pits, who was dedicating the time released to his lifelong wanting to produce art with … More Children Processing the Hard Stuff in Dying County Durham Mining Communities
‘But there is no sign of the boy.’ The coming to age of a queer boy told in the third person captures the alienation possible in that experience but that may be all it seeks to show! This is a blog on Michael Amherst (2025) The Boyhood of Cain London, Faber & Faber. I sighed … More ‘But there is no sign of the boy.’ The coming to age of a queer boy told in the third person captures the alienation possible in that experience but that may be all it seeks to show! This is a blog on Michael Amherst (2025) ‘The Boyhood of Cain’.
“The Story of the Stone: Tales, Entreaties & Incantations“: the artist and shaman come nearest to us in sharing an acknowledgement of the opaque density of our experience. New short stories by James Kelman I have already referred to this set of stories in a past blog [see this link to read if you wish]. … More ‘The Story of the Stone”: the artist and shaman come nearest to us in sharing an acknowledgement of the opaque density of our experience. New short stories by James Kelman.
‘… caught in improper possession of another person’s property’.[1] This blog examines the sensibility of the outsider’s desire to belong and have no belongings. Abdulrazak Gurnah (2025) ‘Theft‘ is a novel in a great tradition of ‘David Copperfield‘ & ‘Great Expectations’. Karim, whose growth to total self-possession makes him the main contender pretender to be … More ‘… caught in improper possession of another person’s property’. Abdulrazak Gurnah (2025) ‘Theft’ is a novel in a great tradition of ‘David Copperfield’ & ‘Great Expectations’.
My current reading Being retired and in one’s seventh decade of age leaves the issue of time open and yet I seem forever to find certain nagging questions pressing on my mind as if they mattered top anyone – even myself. Here is a case in point. i have resolved to do a blog a … More When I do strange things, fortunately I laugh at myself. A case in point …
I am still cataloguing books, clearing away rejects as I go and re-reading when I feel the curiosity. I placed the 2826th book for keeping on the catalogue I am making tonight (the rest boxed for various Fates) and then sat down to read that little book through again and reflect. It was a volume … More The art of not being looked at comfortably: Ron Mueck
‘There is always too much and too little said in any story of desire’. [1] Simon Goldhill is an exquisite historian as well as scholar of Greek drama, as his book on the Benson family deeply illustrates (see my blog on this at this link). As works they they therefore satisfy without commentary – for … More ‘There is always too much and too little said in any story of desire’. A blog that won’t be written on a book that just needs to be read and reflected upon.
Growth and hunger create awareness of ‘hollow spaces that never existed before’: Tash Aw’s The South focuses upon the lives of queer ‘angry young men’, and even boys grown as wild as El Niño. But are both responding to an extraordinary and new ‘physical evolution stronger than’ any of us or merely to ‘the effect … More Tash Aw’s ‘The South’ focuses upon the lives of queer ‘angry young men’, and even boys grown as wild as El Niño.
We sometimes think racism was inevitable in post-colonial Britain, but looking for evidence of it in writing is sometimes an issue that needs thought. I have a good, if incomplete collection of Robin Jenkins’ novels amongst my library which I once read avidly and all the time. I still prize above above many other novels … More Racism, Sexism, and British writing at the end of the colonial period and the knotty problem of point of view.
In her mid-career (in 1990), the mow deceased novelist A.S. Byatt wrote a novel called Possession. This novel attempted to bring together people whose actions running in parallel between two centuries learn about the values that gather around the term posession. to do so Byatt called on most of the meanings that the word ‘posession’ … More Each day is a chance to learn how to rely neither on what I possess, or wish to possess, and hence no longer, perhaps, to be possessed.
‘I don’t think I can write about my own life yet, but I’ve written it all down. … It’s funny how I’ve been writing stories about other people until now …’, says ‘Mambro’, the middle generation of the queer men as named by his nephew, in one Bangladeshi family. However, when Mambro told the story … More This blog discusses Santanu Bhattacharya’s 2025 wonderful queer novel, ‘Deviants’.
‘I’ve done worse things, things I am not proud of including standing here in the dark with David, I know there’s a little bit of hypocrisy there, there are shades of hypocrisy in everything. Our principles stretch like elastic bands’.[1] When certainties fail us, as they must in time, there may be no alternative to … More ‘I’ve done worse things, things I am not proud of including standing here in the dark with David, I know there’s a little bit of hypocrisy there, there are shades of hypocrisy in everything. Our principles stretch like elastic bands’. This is a blog on Nicola Dinan (2025) ‘Disappoint Me’.
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