Wednesday 11 June 2008

What's new?


The lovely ed (Hi, Colin!) at this great journal has taken another of my flashes for the September issue, which is rather nice. I've been re-subbing rejected stories today, and writing the novel. Oh, and reading. I have three books on the go at the moment.

The first is The Untouchable by John Banville. Nothing really wrong with it other than I don't care two hoots about any of the characters. Alan Bennett made me care, with his Question of Attribution script, about the same era and its fallout. Banville does Literary like nobody else but for a story that Moves Me I suspect he'll see more of my money 'writing as Benjamin Black'.

The second is The Collector by John Fowles. Why has it taken me this long to get around to reading this book? I'm two chapters in, and captivated. The voice is damn near perfect. My only slight niggle is how the heck he's going to sustain the material over a full-length novel; at the moment, it reads like a short story. A great short story.

The third is Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald. Picked up for pence at the doctor's this morning (turns out the chances are I have nothing more frightening than acid reflux). Booker prize winning novella about misfits living in barges on the Thames. Right up against Battersea Power Station. How can I not read this?

No comments: