"An eloquent, humane work of criticism, which displays Vendler's typical sensitivity to what Wordsworth called the ‘turnings intricate of verse.’"
Bret van den Brink on Helen Vendler's Inhabit the Poem
review31.co.uk/article/view...
"At his best, Lerner combines fiction & criticism to postulate both a novel vision of the social possibilities of art & the artistic possibilities of socialising."
Nick Bartlett on Ben Lerner's Transcription
review31.co.uk/article/view...
"The Palm House is a funny book. Part of me wants to write blackly funny; darkly funny — but in truth, it’s the humour that operates the levers of complexity."
@marrrtha.bsky.social on Gwendoline Riley's The Palm House
review31.co.uk/article/view...
Here’s my take on Cory Doctorow’s #enshittification published by @versobooks.bsky.social for @review31.bsky.social (give them a follow)— it’s funny, depressing but ultimately it’s a useful resource for working out why so many platforms increasingly offer up awful UX. review31.co.uk/article/view...
“Cooper’s novels remind us that an artistic life is all about practice, a way of living: observation, questions, uncertainty.”
In @review31.bsky.social, Thomas Chadwick reviews Jeremy Cooper’s new novel, “Discord” - review31.co.uk/article/view...
The Plains, by Federico Falco and translated by Jennifer Croft, is a "moving and beautifully made novel".
Thank you @review31.bsky.social!
review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...
I spent some time with last year's Nightjar Press chapbooks and ended up writing about creepy birds and the contemporary gothic. Review 31 kindly took it on. Free to read here: review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...
@review31.bsky.social @nightjarpress.bsky.social
"The letters convey a picture of two writers in alternating states of vitality & decline, pushing against the threat of both illness & obscurity."
Rachel Dastgir on LETTERS TO EUGENE
review31.co.uk/article/view...
"Dog Days is a work that contends with the difficulty of committing words to a page, & letting them stay there."
Julia Merican on Emily LaBarge's DOG DAYS
review31.co.uk/article/view...
My pick for @review31.bsky.social's Books of the Year 2025 is Alex Pheby's Waterblack, the third volume in the Cities of the Weft trilogy. Superb, strange fantasy that has reinvigorated the genre. @alexpheby.bsky.social @galleybeggars.bsky.social
review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...
A pleasure to contribute to this connoisseurs' list of books of the year for @review31.bsky.social
review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...
I chose Old Kiln by Jia Pingwa, translated by James Trapp, Olivia Milburn and Christopher Payne, published by @sinoistbooks.bsky.social
That time of year again, and here's my off-trail Book of the Year choice.
"Pester has a precise ear for the frictionless formulations of contemporary organisational life that promise progress while pointing at nothing. These empty signifiers become a source of dread rather than comedy."
Robert Kiely on THE EXPANSION PROJECT
review31.co.uk/article/view...
"The internet is cooked. What began as a genuinely participatory medium ... has since become an extractive device, mining human creativity for corporate profit."
Christopher Webb on Joanna Walsh's AMATEURS!
review31.co.uk/article/view...
"It’s in the precarious middle zone between personal rage & systemic failure that disaster nationalism mutates."
Tymek Woodham on Richard Seymour's Disaster Nationalism
review31.co.uk/article/view...
"The result is a book that emerges as of a spell: of preservation, but also a conjuring of memories that have been lost or deliberately forgotten."
Jemima Skala on Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day, House of Night
review31.co.uk/article/view...
hello Bluesky I wrote an article about the French author, photographer, and conceptual artist Édouard Levé, who wrote a book called “Suicide” and then immediately killed himself
review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...
“The result is a book that emerges as of a spell: of preservation, but also a conjuring of memories that have been lost or deliberately forgotten.”
In @review31.bsky.social, Jemima Skala reviews Olga Tokarczuk’s newly translated novel, “House of Day, House of Night” review31.co.uk/article/view...
Very grateful to Hugh Foley and @review31.bsky.social for this thoughtful and perceptive review of Poor Ghost!
"Little Pink Book doesn’t just perform dandyism; it participates in what Fredric Jameson famously called pastiche: a ‘blank parody’ that imitates style without satirical intent or critical edge."
Elena Basada on Olivia Kan-Sperling's LITTLE PINK BOOK
review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...
“‘Cautery’ follows two women, one real and one imagined, one left unnamed and one semi-forgotten to history.”
In @review31.bsky.social, Bronwyn Scott-McCharen reviews Lucía Lijtmaer’s newly translated novel, “Cautery” - review31.co.uk/article/view...
“The object of fixation becomes an instrument for self-flagellation, rather than a breathing person to know and to love.”
In @review31.bsky.social, Brynn Valentine reviews Harriet Armstrong’s debut novel, “To Rest Our Minds and Bodies” - review31.co.uk/article/view...
"Tham's simple call is radical: sex is more than 'just sex', for it is social and socially 'spoken'."
Gabrielle Sicam on Revolutionary Desires
review31.co.uk/article/view...
"The old guard of self-consciously male writers would have found only the comic, the satirical even, in such a colossus of inarticulacy as Istvan; what Szalay finds, however, is something universal."
@cosmoadair.bsky.social on David Szalay's FLESH
tinyurl.com/mpfcu74r
"What does it mean to write for the future when the possibility of any future at all is thrown radically into doubt?"
Jon Repetti on two Attilas
bit.ly/4i0hYNP
"What does it mean to write for the future when the possibility of any future at all is thrown radically into doubt?"
Jon Repetti on two Attilas
bit.ly/4i0hYNP
Great to see the institution that is Review 31 on Bluesky!
"Self-knowledge alone simply isn’t going to cut it; to really understand the way ‘anger drives the world’, one must look beyond the heuristic of the individual."
Tymek Woodham on Josh Cohen's All the Rage: Why Anger Drives the World (@grantamag.bsky.social)
review31.co.uk/article/view...
