Anthony Cummins

Lombardy, Mantua, Western Visayas

Freelance Contributor at Freelance

PIRATE and Author. Marine Captain retired. Consultant for piracy flims/books. published The 13th Day 2nd Edition: https://t.co/rTqVCPOqB1

Articles

Crushingly tender: The best Literary Fiction out now

3 weeks ago | dailymail.co.uk | Anthony Cummins

Crushingly tender: The best Literary Fiction out now - Fulfillment by Lee Cole, Love Forms by Claire Adam, The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen by Shokoofeh Azar By ANTHONY CUMMINS Published: 19:01 EDT, 5 June 2025 | Updated: 19:01 EDT, 5 June 2025 FULFILLMENT by Lee Cole (Faber £18.99, 336 pp) US author Cole didn’t get the fanfare he deserved for his 2022 debut, Groundskeeping, so fingers crossed for this compulsively readable follow-up, a tragicomic tale of sibling rivalry between...
In Atmosphere, lust and tragedy are written in the stars

3 weeks ago | observer.co.uk | Anthony Cummins

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s tale of a clandestine affair between two astronauts in the 1980s is a richly drawn page-turner Critics didn’t really begin to notice Taylor Jenkins Reid until 2019, the year the American novelist published Daisy Jones & the Six, an oral history of a 1970s rock band loosely drawn on Fleetwood Mac.
Electric Spark by Frances Wilson: Spy, Secretary, Superstar: The Prime of Miss Muriel Spark

3 weeks ago | dailymail.co.uk | Anthony Cummins

Electric Spark: The Enigma Of Muriel Spark by Frances Wilson (Bloomsbury £25, 432pp)In the summer of 1953, Muriel Spark – not yet the famous novelist behind The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie – was en route from London to the Edinburgh Festival, rattling with amphetamines. She was reviewing a new play by T.S. Eliot, who praised the ensuing article as ‘one of the two or three most intelligent reviews’ he read.
AI can’t match the human art of translation

1 month ago | observer.co.uk | Anthony Cummins

Two illuminating new books offer original perspectives on the significance of an undervalued skill With more than 1.9m titles sold in the UK in 2022, it’s a boom time for translated fiction. Yet there are ominous reports in the trade press of publishers increasingly asking translators to clean up AI-generated first passes, so you sense storm clouds are brewing.
Ocean Vuong review: the white lies of a lost boy | The Observer

1 month ago | observer.co.uk | Anthony Cummins

A teenager’s bond with an elderly Lithuanian widow fuels this panoramic portrait of an America steeped in pain The Emperor of GladnessOcean VuongJonathan Cape, £20, pp416Ocean Vuong’s first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, drew on his experience of growing up gay as an opioid-addicted child labourer picking tobacco in small-town Connecticut, where he and his mother arrived as refugees from Vietnam in 1990.
Sarah Moss: ‘My relationship with time is different now’

1 month ago | observer.co.uk | Anthony Cummins

Sarah Moss photographed in Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, by Patrick Bolger for the Observer New Review, April 2025 The academic and writer on childhood inspiration, the two countries at the heart of her new novel, and why a room of one’s own really is all it’s cracked up to be Sarah Moss, 49, grew up in Manchester and has lived in County Dublin since 2020.
Roving reflections in the best Literary Fiction out now

1 month ago | dailymail.co.uk | Anthony Cummins

Roving reflections in the best Literary Fiction out now: ABSENCE by Issa Quincy, MUCKLE FLUGGA by Michael Pedersen, THE BOOK OF RECORDS by Madeleine Thien By ANTHONY CUMMINS Published: 19:01 EDT, 15 May 2025 | Updated: 19:01 EDT, 15 May 2025 ABSENCE by Issa Quincy (Granta £14.99, 192pp) A big influence on the 21st-century literary novel is the essayistic fiction of the late German writer WG Sebald, whose imprint can be seen on Rachel Cusk and Teju Cole, two of many authors to ditch plot and...
'In 20 years of reviewing, I'm not sure I've read a funnier book, or one I've enjoyed more': The best Literary Fiction out now - FUN AND GAMES by John Patrick McHugh, VANISHING WORLD by Sayaka Murata, OPEN, HEAVEN by Sean Hewitt | Daily Mail Online

2 months ago | dailymail.co.uk | Anthony Cummins

'In 20 years of reviewing, I'm not sure I've read a funnier book, or one I've enjoyed more': The best Literary Fiction out now - FUN AND GAMES by John Patrick McHugh, VANISHING WORLD by Sayaka Murata, OPEN, HEAVEN by Sean Hewitt By ANTHONY CUMMINS Published: 19:01 EDT, 24 April 2025 | Updated: 19:01 EDT, 24 April 2025 FUN AND GAMES by John Patrick McHugh (4th Estate £14.99, 400pp) I HAD a blast with this super-smart novel about a 17-year-old Gaelic footballer, John, navigating parental...
Paradise Logic by Sophie Kemp review - a TikTok Stepford Wives for the Pornhub era

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Anthony Cummins

Set in upstate New York, Sophie Kemp’s surreal satirical debut puts us in the uneasy company of a part-time model who calls herself Reality as she sets out on a crazed quest to become the perfect girlfriend. The chief beneficiary of her self-education is a crack-smoking postgrad and wannabe musician named Ariel, who cheats openly, gives her an infection and – in the reader’s eye – sees her as little more than a sex toy able to fetch snacks.
Audition by Katie Kitamura review - an evasive experiment

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Anthony Cummins

Katie Kitamura’s most recent books, A Separation (2017) and Intimacies (2021) – each narrated by an unnamed woman upping sticks for Europe in the wake of emotional upheaval – were among several American novels to take inspiration from the coolly analytical style of Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy.