An end of week recap

“…no other essay form becomes as quickly obsolete as an unfavourable review. If the work under attack is valuable, it survives adverse comment. If it is not, the polemic dies with its target. A critic is therefore measured not by the books he prosecutes but by the ones he praises.”
–  Renata Adler

I will be spending a few days in Liverpool next week, so anticipate being more off than online, thus leaving little opportunity for link truffling. Consequently, there will be no wind up on Saturday, I’m afraid. My next dispatch from the shores of Darkest North Wales will, I hope, be with you on the last day of the month – just in time to pay tribute to parrots of the world on their special day, should it prove necessary (or to put it another way, should I be light on content). Come to think of it, I recall several parrots in literature. Hmm… 🤔

As ever, this is a post in which I summarise books read, reviewed and currently on my TBR shelf. In addition to a variety of literary titbits, I look ahead to forthcoming publications, see what folk have on their nightstands and keep readers abreast of various book-related happenings.

CHATTERBOOKS >>

If you are planning a reading event, challenge, competition, or anything else likely to be of interest to the book blogging community and its followers, please let me know. I will happily share your news here with the fabulous array of bibliowonks who read this weekly wind up.

* Lit Crit Blogflash *  

I am going to share with you a couple of my favourite posts from around the blogosphere. There are a great many talented writers producing high-quality book features and reviews, which made it difficult to pick only these two – both published in the last few weeks:

#krazyaboutkafka (6): Lovers of Franz K – Burhan Sönmez – “Those expecting this slim novella to centre around the ladies in Franz Kafka’s life are in for a surprise”, says Lizzy Siddal in her review of Lovers of Franz K for Lizzy’s Literary Life (Volume 2). It is, in fact, a tale of “disaffected young of the 1960s, so enamoured with Franz Kafka, that they seek revenge” on Max Brod, the Bohemian-born Israeli author, composer, journalist and literary executor of Kafka, who was instructed to burn all the novelist’s unpublished work upon his death. He decides instead to ‘publish and be damned’ – consequently, he is now accused of disrespecting his late friend’s “dying wishes”. Brod is subsequently injured in an assassination attempt, and we join the story as his assailant, Ferdy Kaplan, is in police custody. Read the full review to find out what led Lizzy to consider this book an “inversion of Kafka’s The Trial” and why she enjoyed every one of its “110 fabulous pages!”

Alien Auteur – In a recent post for Manchester Review of Books, Caleb Gaines examines D. Harlan Wilson’s Strangelove Country: Science Fiction, Filmosophy, and the Kubrickian Consciousness – an analysis of Stanley Kubrick’s relationship with science fiction that delves into the way the genre influenced his filmic identity. This investigation is “not so much an academic study”, he says, “as a philosophical guide book, leading the reader through the Kubrick mindscape.” The sci-fi aspect is “front-and-centre in Wilson’s reading” of the legendary director’s ‘futurist trilogy’, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange as he “seeks to understand how Kubrick’s films think”. What makes this book “so compelling is its balance of rigor and playfulness” – he is “erudite without being impenetrable” and “never loses sight of [his] subject.” All told, it is “bold and original”, marking out “new territory” in science fiction criticism.

* Irresistible Items *

Umpteen fascinating articles appeared on my bookdar last week. I generally make a point of tweeting/x-ing (not to mention tooting and bsky-ing) a few favourite finds (or adding them to my Facebook group page), but in case you missed anything, here are a selection of interesting snippets: 

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Bookanista: Brontë country – Cate Baum’s speculative novel, Land of Hope, set in a near-future Brontë-esque England, “mixes history and the myths of the English moors in a compelling modern […] fable of serial killers at the end of the world”. 

BBC Culture: The lost 1934 novel that gave a chilling warning about the horrors of Nazi Germany – “Published years before WW2, Sally Carson’s prescient novel [Crooked Cross, newly republished by Persephone Books,] captures the dawn of Nazi tyranny in a small German town – and remains relevant today.”

The Conversation: With Moominmamma, Tove Jansson created a hero who wields a handbag instead of a sword – “Moominmamma is resourceful, and shows it is possible to survive a long and arduous journey without a weapon, instead using her bag”, observes Isabel Joely Black – a teaching fellow in Anthropology at the University of Manchester who is currently “building a miniature of the Moomin House to study art and craft in process, as well as the relationships between Moomins and the physical world around them.”

The Daily Star: Feluda, the idea of ‘Bangali Bhadralok’, and the gendered silence in detective fiction – “These decisions hint at an implicit belief that certain genres or readerships require the exclusion of certain genders, whether due to artistic limitations, market considerations, or adherence to established genre conventions”, says Mahmuda Emdad.

The Bookseller: Margaret Atwood wins British Book Award for the Freedom to Publish – The Handmaid’s Tale author spoke out as she accepted the freedom to publish prize at the British Book awards, reports Melina Spanoudi.

Sydney Review of Books: Futures Not Taken – “Science fiction has a history of harnessing pop music and psychedelic elements to envision radical alternatives to the status quo. James Macaronas observes that Jordan Prosser’s Big Time taps into this legacy but falls short of going all the way.” 

Huck: Katie Goh: “I want people to engage with the politics of oranges” – “In her new book, [Foreign Fruit,] the Edinburgh-based writer traces her personal history through the citrus fruit’s global spread, from a village in China to Californian groves. Angela Hui caught up with her to find out more.”

Orwell News: The Orwell Prizes 2025: Finalists announced – “From the best political fiction to powerful reporting on homelessness, discover this year’s shortlists.”

The Nation: Pay Attention! – “By transforming quotations into evidence, close reading served as way to turn postwar criticism into a specialized knowledge. But what if we treated it more as an art form?” asks Dan Sinykin in his review of John Guillory’s On Close Reading.

Liberties: We Must Save The Books – Michael Kimmage on his personal encounter with the American administration’s depredations. 

Toronto Life: “Toronto is my obsession”: André Alexis on his new short story collection, Other Worlds – “The author [of Other World] talks [to Anthony Milton] about honouring his parents through writing, the beauty of his adopted home and what it means to behave ‘Canadian’”.

The Hobbyhorse: Magic Circles – Ethan Gibson explores the overlap between Rebecca West’s The Return of the Soldier and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return.

National Heritage Memorial Fund: UCL acquires rare correspondence between George Orwell and his publisher – “The collection was at risk of being sold to private owners. Now it will be preserved, cared for and secured for the public as a valuable piece of the UK’s cultural heritage.”

Historia: When fiction is fatal – Byron and vampires – “Vampires in Venice? In her new Gothic thriller, Dangerous, Essie Fox imagines what could happen if fiction appears to become fatal fact when Lord Byron is living in the water-bound city. Here she writes about the two incidents from Byron’s life that inspired her novel.”

Pioneer Works Broadcast: Toward a Maternal Gaze – “We’ve heard the warnings: children will drain your time, your money, and your focus. But what might a writer gain from motherhood?” asks essayist and fiction writer, Kate Shannon Jenkins.

Art of Conversation: Love as a Moral Challenge – ‘Omnivorous reader’, Matthew Morgan, “on Truman Capote’s wistful novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

The Markaz Review: A World in Crisis: Deep Vellum’s Best Literary Translations 2025 – “Ostensibly intended to celebrate the best literary translations published in 2024, this anthology [Best Literary Translations 2025, edited by Noh Anothai,] has a more ambitious (and valiant) aim: to draw attention to writing from and about a world in crisis”, says Lara Vergnaud.

Ancillary Review of Books: Once Upon a Time and the Ever-Present Racial Hegemony: Review of Kimberly J. Lau’s Specters of the Marvelous – “Masterfully written with rigorous scholarly research, Kimberly J. Lau’s Specters of the Marvelous: Race and the Development of the European Fairy Tale presents an important intervention in the study of fairy tales by putting the issue of race center stage”, writes Stacy J. Lettman.

Kyodo News: Japanese novelist Yuzuki’s “Butter” wins British book award – The English version of Butter, a novel by Japanese author Asako Yuzuki, has won the debut fiction category of the 2025 British Book Awards.

The Paris Review: Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, The Art of Fiction No. 267 – Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, “one of Russia’s most beloved writers, spent her early career in a particular kind of obscurity. Until Gorbachev-era reforms, Soviet editors officially refused to publish her stories, deeming them too dark.” Over several late-night conversations, Bela Shayevich discussed with her how she started in journalism, happy endings and the “cloud above the earth, above our world, that contains all ideas.”

The Art Newspaper: The Voynich Manuscript revealed: five things you probably didn’t know about the Medieval masterpiece – “Scholars have speculated for centuries about the meaning behind the 15th-century codex and its peculiar illustrations”, says Garry J. Shaw, author of Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries, the Story of the World’s Mysterious Manuscripts.

The Irish Times: Writers’ shelfies: the must-have books on authors’ bookshelves – “Six Belfast Book Festival authors [each] share one book that has a permanent place on their bookshelf.”

The Critic: The decline of the great literary name – “Where are the Don Quixotes and the Anna Kareninas of the modern age?” asks Jacob Phillips, in a piece recalling the Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann’s 1960 lecture on the naming of characters in novels.

Sydney Arts Guide: Jacqx Mililli: When The Glitter Fades: Vaudeville Machinations – “In her debut novel, [When The Glitter Fades,] Jacqx Mililli has tackled the world of vaudeville in Australia in the first half of the twentieth century.” The “author explores a fascinating period of Australian entertainment history through the medium of historical fiction.”

Engelsberg Ideas: The Second World War had its poets too – Jeremy Wikeley writes: “A study of the poetry of the Second World War [Tim Kendall’s Poetry of the Second World War: An Anthology,] makes for a vital, and long overdue, contribution to the historical record of the conflict.”

Independent: Rebecca Solnit: ‘Fiction was always treated as the most important, literary, aspirational goal – f*** that’ – “The prolific non-fiction writer returns to her favourite themes of hope and uncertainty in her cheerful new book, No Straight Road Takes You There. In a conversation with Hannah Ewens, she discusses why fiction is overrated, why new age spirituality is a hoax and how a functional social welfare state would encourage women to have children”.

North American Review: A Review of Endless Fall: A Little Chronicle By Mohamed Leftah, translated by Eleni Sikelianos – Kristina Sepetys reviews the late Moroccan novelist and literary critic, Mohamed Leftah’s “beautifully crafted, deeply affecting novella” Endless Fall, which is based on his memories of a classmate’s suicide.

Arts Alive San Antonio: Book Review: Eternal Summer by Franziska Gänsler – “The grand spas of Europe provide elegant settings for wondrous human collisions in works by Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann, and others. But Bad Heim, the German resort town in Franziska Gänsler’s sizzling debut novel [Eternal Summer] is extraordinarily hot – in the sense not of trendy but scalding”, writes Steven G. Kellman of this debut “dystopian novel of global warming” and an unexpected bond between two women.

Los Angeles Times: Under her eye: The blessings of Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ – Actress Ann Dowd “was thrilled, and surprised, by the role Aunt Lydia plays in Atwood’s sequel, which like ‘Handmaid’s,’ is presented as a series of historical documents. She has met Atwood on several occasions but was not privy to her thinking”, finds Mary McNamara.

The Arts Shelf: The Folio Society Unveils Summer 2025 Collection – The Folio Society has unveiled its new Summer 2025 Collection, which [went] on sale from 6 May [and is available] exclusively from foliosociety.com.

Caught by the River: The Caught by the River Book of the Month: May – “Book of the Month is Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive?, published by Hamish Hamilton earlier this [month]. Michael Malay reviews, finding a book that thinks with rivers as much as it thinks about them.”

Kismet: Sacred Stuff – “For Kismet’s second issue, […] friends of the magazine [were asked] to share the sacred objects that sit on their desks, in their purses, or perhaps in a marble niche at the bottom of a shady grotto.”

Cultured: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Did the Most Dangerous Thing a Novelist Can Do: Become a Public Intellectual. The Fallout Was Swift.  – “Twelve years since her last foray into fiction, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie returns with a new novel—and a fresh take on the role of free speech and feminism in a modern society.” She speaks to Danielle Jackson about her dislike of travel, her lack of interest in “deep-seated alienation” and love.

The Marginalian: Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, and with Fangs: The Alchemy of Unrequited Love and the Story Behind Emily Dickinson’s Most Famous Poem – Maria Popova has adapted this essay about Emily Dickinson’s mysterious “terror” from the nineteenth chapter of her book Figuring.

The Guardian: Willkommen, bienvenue! New festival celebrates translated fiction from Cameroon to Slovakia as sales boom – “Willkommen, bienvenue! New festival [happening now] celebrates translated fiction from Cameroon to Slovakia as sales boom. Co-organised by translator Polly Barton, Translated By, Bristol [features] conversations between writers and their translators, plus a ‘translation duel’.”

Literary Review: All Yesterday’s Parties – Frances Wilson considers what makes a good literary party and why poets have always proved such curmudgeons.

The Common Reader: What to do about the decline of the humanities. – Henry Oliver strongly suggests: “Stop complaining and just read the best books that you can and talk about them.”

The University Times: A Conversation with Hearth Magazine – “Eliora Abramson interviews the founders of Trinity’s next big literary magazine.”

Narratively: How to Make Ghosts Come Alive: Writing Real-Life Characters When Almost Nothing Is Known About Them – “While penning The Art Spy, Michelle Young learned how to meticulously research subjects who are no longer alive and stories that are not widely known. Here, she shares tips on how you can do it too.”

The Duck-Billed Reader: Shielding the Reader: “Fallen” Women and the Realist Victorian Novel – Claire Laporte describes how in novels the Victorian realists [tied] themselves into knots when addressing the touchy subject of nonmarital sex.”

Books Ireland: Take Six: Six Irish Women Writers —Farrelly’s editorial vision is cohesive, intelligent, and subtle – Take Six: Six Irish Women Writers is, says Ruby Eastwood, “a rich and quietly urgent anthology that explores the moral and emotional dissonance in the Irish female experience through a realist lens.”

Nation Cymru: Vote for the Wales Book of the Year 2025 People’s Choice Award – “The Wales Book of the Year Award celebrates talented Welsh writers who excel in a variety of literary forms in both Welsh and English.” You are invited to submit votes for your favourites on this page.

Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society: A glow-worm in the nursery – “Evelyn Cheesman, entomologist and traveller” – “a guest post by Dr Sarah Lonsdale, author of a new group biography, Wildly Different: How five women reclaimed nature in a man’s world”.

El Mundo: Alberto Gómez Vaquero: “When you’re a teenager and you read with passion, books are almost like a drug” – Raúl Conde speaks to the writer as he “publishes When the River Returns (Carpe Noctem), a novel about the influence of books on the transition to adulthood in a village in rural Spain”.

The New York Times: The Best Books of the Year (So Far) – The NYT Books Staff with the “nonfiction and novels [they] can’t stop thinking about.”

The Kathmandu Post: Can love be this pure? – “Romanticism in [Kahlil Gibran’s] The Broken Wings might seem distant to modern readers, but the book’s beautiful language makes it unforgettable”, writes Sanskriti Pokharel.

Laura Thompson’s Substack: Mapp and Lucia – Laura revisits E.F. Benson’s “genius”, utterly English, “faintly surreal” Mapp and Lucia novels, which she declares “comparable with Wodehouse”.

The Public Domain Review: As Bright as a Feather: Ostriches, Home Dyeing, and the Global Plume Trade – “In the 19th century, dyed ostrich feathers were haute couture, adorning the hats and boas of fashionistas on both sides of the Atlantic. Whitney Rakich examines the far-reaching ostrich industry through a peculiar do-it-yourself-style book: Alexander Paul’s The Practical Ostrich Feather Dyer (1888), a text interleaved with richly colored specimens.”

Vintage: Meet the Weird Girls – This September, Vintage Classics is launching a series of nine novels by pioneering female authors that they say will take readers “to the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction.”

The Washington Post: Why do romance covers all look like this now? – Sophia Nguyen can’t help but notice that the traditional “models embracing in ‘the clinch’ are long gone, replaced by the vector couple.”

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FINALLY >>

If there is something you would particularly like to see on Winding Up the Week or if you have any suggestions, questions, or comments for Book Jotter in general, please drop me a line or comment below. I would be delighted to hear from you.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I wish you a week bountiful in books and rich in reading.

NB In this feature, ‘winding up’ refers to the act of concluding something and should not be confused with the British expression: ‘wind-up’ – an age-old pastime of ‘winding-up’ friends and family by teasing or playing pranks on them. If you would like to know more about this expression, there is an excellent description on Urban Dictionary.

Categories: Winding Up the Week

Tags: André Alexis, Burhan Sönmez, Cate Baum, D. Harlan Wilson, Garry J. Shaw, Renata Adler, Robert Macfarlane, Science Fiction, Stanley Kubrick, Tanya Farrelly