Antonia White’s Frost in May
The advance publicity for this review of Antonia White’s 1933 novel Frost In May warns that I am enraged. I’d be amazed if anyone reading this novel is not similarly … Continue reading
Will on the TNT cable TV network
Twenty years ago cinema audiences fell for “Shakespeare in Love”, a film that presented the playwright as all too human, so different from the stuffy fellow many people thought he … Continue reading
Coming Up This Week
This week VL takes on a lofty air as we dive into words, both the use of them in a technical way and the use of them by Masters of … Continue reading
Fell by Jenn Ashworth
Alluring, ephemeral and deadly, Morecambe Bay dominates the coastal areas of south Cumbria and north west Lancashire. No-one who has ever travelled by train between Oxenholme and Lancaster can forget … Continue reading
The Bookshop, by Penelope Fitzgerald
I am very much enjoying exploring a new literary landscape: East Anglia, the land of fens, floods and enormous skies. My exploration started with Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That … Continue reading
A Line Made By Walking, by Sara Baume
This is the second novel in my 2017 challenge to read a work of literary fiction every month by a novelist new to me; this one is a little late, … Continue reading
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Dana is a twenty-six year old black woman living in California in 1976. She is married to Kevin, who is white, and who rejected his racist family to marry Dana. … Continue reading
Historical Fiction Week on VL
Historical fiction is the closest thing we have to a time machine. When done right, it can transport you to another time and place as if a history book came … Continue reading
Vulpes Libris classic: interview with novelist and Virginia Woolf expert, Susan Sellers
I didn’t quite know what to pick for my first Vulpes Libris Classic choice – Simon speaking, by the way – so I thought I’d go through the archive and … Continue reading
The Unseen World by Liz Moore
‘Ada Sibelius is twelve years old and home-schooled. Her days are spent in a lab with her father Daivd – a computer science professor – and the brilliant minds of … Continue reading
Giovanni’s Room
I took part in a book pyramid scheme recently. It was a send-it-back, upside-down-tree-connections thing, running through Facebook. My friend D recruited me, so I sent a book to her … Continue reading
Five “Claudine” novels by Colette
When I was fifteen, I was Claudine. Why not? I was rebellious and had chestnut curls. I read and reread my literary auntie’s lovely copy of Colette’s Claudine at School … Continue reading
What Makes Us Laugh
In these cloudy days of winter and gloomy current events, sometimes we need not just lighter fare, but something that sends us over the top into glee. The Foxes have … Continue reading
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