Catherine Taylor

Nov 20, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Suzi Feay |Alison Kelly |Catherine Taylor |Michael LaPointe

Some novels, particularly those of a supernatural or fantastical bent, can read like working notes for their fullest iteration as a movie. By contrast, Andrew Michael Hurley’s grisliest jolts are best achieved without the use of special effects. Take the recent adaptation of his novel Starve Acre (TLS, November 29, 2019; September 20, 2024 for the film), with Matt Smith as a bereaved archaeologist monitoring a dead hare’s uncanny regeneration in a cardboard box.

Nov 20, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Michael LaPointe |Alison Kelly |Suzi Feay |Catherine Taylor

In the town, no one has a shadow. That is because the people have their shadows stripped at birth, or else leave them at the impenetrable twenty-six-foot-high wall that surrounds the town, guarded by a gruff Gatekeeper. The clocks have no hands here, but seasons do pass; in the winter the local population of unicorns dies off, and the Gatekeeper burns their carcasses in a pit, the smoke visible for miles. The town is serene but somehow vacant, with its bland food, lack of music, dreamless sleeps.

Nov 10, 2024 | irishtimes.com | Catherine Taylor

“This is not the end of the story”, warns a profoundly disturbing satirical novel about the flamboyant history, double-dealings, long-held secrets and local atrocities of a small Austrian town, which, altogether, come to represent the guilt of an entire nation. The story opens in summer 1989, with the imminent reunification of neighbouring Germany.

Oct 2, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Catherine Taylor |Nat Segnit |Beejay Silcox |Nina Allan

Doors – as means of escape or entrapment, of release or privacy – proliferate in Roddy Doyle’s new novel. At the beginning of The Women Behind the Door, in which three older women are en route to their first Covid vaccination, a confused man is trapped in a lift; initially, he is mocked by the women, but a form of compassionate recognition comes to the fore: “Everything about him was defeated. He was lost in his body”.

Oct 2, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | Nat Segnit |Beejay Silcox |Catherine Taylor |Nina Allan

It is sobering to think that, if he continues to train at his current rate, Richard Powers may one day be able to generate a text all but indistinguishable from an actual work of literary fiction. Don’t be overly alarmed: it’s a way off yet.