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Oct 16, 2024 | 
theface.com | Ruby Conway
It wasn’t long ago that cruise ships exulted the sort of terror you might associate with a disaster film: mid-Covid pandemic, disease spreading like wildfire, no escape. In our collective imagination, cruise ships have often been a byword for the elderly – an easy, hassle-free, movement-limited mode of travel that suits the needs of a certain generation. You might be surprised, however, to find that the average age of cruisers is on the decline.
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Nov 22, 2023 | 
nbmagazine.co.uk | Ruby Conway
Madeleine: One thing I picked up on throughout the whole book was that there were a lot of paradoxes and contradictions that kept coming up when you talk about the influencer industry. There’s the brand vs the person; the fact that you have to work very hard, but also make it appear effortless; and the comparison to pop music, which I loved, that people tend to love to hate influencers. Do you think all these contradictions are specific to your industry?
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Nov 22, 2023 | 
nbmagazine.co.uk | Ruby Conway |Madeleine Knowles
For many readers, bookshops are a kind of love affair. They involve desire - the endless choices of books - that can’t ever be fully satiated. They involve obsession - with a beloved author or book. And they involve loyalty - to a trusted bookseller or bookshop.
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Nov 10, 2023 | 
nbmagazine.co.uk | Ruby Conway
Alice Winn’s Prize-winning debut is a deftly constructed and thoroughly researched tale of love and loss during World War One, darting between the boarding school rooms of Preshute College and the Western Front. The book grips as much as it haunts, exploring the relationship between Elwood and Gaunt – childhood best friends and eventually lovers – as their relationships to each other, themselves, and their country changes over the course of the horrors they face on the front.
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Oct 30, 2023 | 
nbmagazine.co.uk | Ruby Conway
Zadie Smith made her epic return with the historical novel The Fraud this September, a multi-layered saga inspired by the real events of a nineteenth-century imposture trial concerning the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy and the formerly enslaved Andrew Bogle, a key witness. Centring on Eliza Touchet, a Scottish housekeeper and a sceptic of Dickens, The Fraud is about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity.
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Oct 26, 2023 | 
nbmagazine.co.uk | Ruby Conway |Madeleine Knowles
From the acclaimed author of The Girls and Daddy comes The Guest. Cast out by Simon, the older, wealthier man she is staying with on Long Island, after a misstep at a dinner party which fractures her calculated impersonation of a certain type of woman, Alex is told to go back to the city. But in the city, she owes a persistent Dom - an ex-boyfriend - a significant amount of money and she has no place to stay.
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Oct 18, 2023 | 
nbmagazine.co.uk | Ruby Conway
While working on this issue, I decided the time for my Greek education was ripe, so I picked up a copy of Stephen Fry’s hugely popular Mythos and Ted Hughes’ Tales from Ovid to immerse myself in these classical stories. And what I mostly learnt is that the gods, like humans, are capable of extreme cruelty and intense passion. They are lustful, jealous, cruel, and prideful.
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Oct 12, 2023 | 
nbmagazine.co.uk | Ruby Conway |Madeleine Knowles
First, would you be able to tell us a little more about the process of crafting this story. Was there a specific concept you had from the beginning? For me, the process when working on a novel is as important as the result. So, when I start a novel, I never know what kind of novel I’m going to write, and somehow, I feel like it doesn’t matter. When working, writing, and researching, what I want to do is learn and ask questions, so my writing has a lot to do with curiosity, fun and playfulness.
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Aug 29, 2023 | 
nbmagazine.co.uk | Ruby Conway
Kairos, in Ancient Greek, means 'the right, critical, or opportune moment' or the ‘god of good fortunate moments’. It’s a term that denotes the exploration of temporality, and one that can be applied to both the personal and the political in Jenny Erpenbeck’s new novel. The prize-winning German novelist returns this Summer with Kairos, an all-consuming love story set against the shadowy backdrop of communist East Germany and the eventual German reunification.
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Aug 24, 2023 | 
nbmagazine.co.uk | Ruby Conway
A fleeting lyric from Nick Cave’s ‘Hollywood’Now Hoke didn’t specify the lyric, but we can only assume it’s one from the following verse, that anthropomorphises a cougar in ‘the hills’: I’m gonna buy me a house up in the hillsWith a tear-shaped pool and a gun that killsCause they say there is a cougar that roams these partsWith a terrible engine of wrath for a heartThat she is white and rare and full of all kinds of harmAnd stalks the perimeter all day longBut at night lays trembling in my arms
