Gail Honeyman: ‘I didn’t want Eleanor Oliphant to be portrayed as a victim’

The Costa award-winning debut novelist on the kindness of Glasgow and becoming a full-time writer in her 40sGail Honeyman arrives in London trailing a wheelie-case, having travelled from Glasgow on a plane that was supposed to leave at 7am, but was delayed by the freezing weather. As we take the escalator up to liberate her of the case for a photocall, we muse on the peculiarity of a –7C ground frost stranding a plane which regularly flies at air temperatures of –40C.In ways that only those who have found themselves sucked into her award-winning debut novel will truly understand, this is an Eleanor Oliphant moment: it enfolds a stressful experience, stoically borne, in the beady intelligence of a woman who is rarely seen in public without a trolley-bag. The comparison has less to do with Honeyman herself than with the capacity of her writing to make everything seem a little bit strange, slightly dislocated from its face value. Related: Meet the new faces of fiction for 2017 I think there are a lot of Raymonds in the world – ordinary, kind, decent men who don’t often get featured in fiction Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2018-01-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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STREET WRITER: The literary video game we didn’t know we needed.

Tired of the subtweets? The peevish reviews? The [gasp] indecorous email sign-offs? Do you wish the literary world would just conduct its brawls out in the open for all to see? Well, now you can fight along at home with Street Writer, Maxwell Neely-Cohen’s absolutely wonderful literary homage to... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-04 14:06:11 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #literary world


10 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth's favorite U.S. state, estimated wealth, nanny troubles, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-01-08 05:00:00 UTC ]
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John le Carré didn’t just invent the characters in the foreground of the spy world. He designed the entire set.

His genius was that his re-imaginings of people and events have proved more memorable than the real things. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2020-12-14 10:02:24 UTC ]
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I didn’t think I understood modern poetry. The less I tried to get it, the more I came to love it.

My introduction to contemporary poets was a trial by fire. Here’s what I learned along the way. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2020-12-04 14:00:00 UTC ]
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One of Europe’s Great Libraries Didn’t Stand a Chance… In Either of the World Wars

Exactly a century after the burning of Washington another invading army encountered a library, and saw it as a perfect way to strike a blow at the heart of their enemy. This time the action would have a global impact, as the means of spreading news had been transformed in the century since the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2020-12-02 09:48:49 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #world wars #global impact #literary hub #libraries


Lucy Jago | 'It really mattered to me that I didn’t play fast and loose with the facts'

In 1615, a sensational public murder trail took place  in London. The victim, courtier and poet Sir Thomas Overbury, had died in 1613 while a prisoner in the Tower of London, but his death was only investigated two years later as wild rumours swirled around the court of James I. The whispers... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-10 17:39:33 UTC ]
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Ruth Coker Burks | 'I wanted the [victims] to be counted, to have their lives matter'

"They'd put a big red plastic bag over the entire door, and all his food trays were on the floor outside. And then the nurses started drawing straws to choose who would have to go in there and check on him.” On Zoom, Ruth Coker Burks is reliving the moment in 1984 when, while visiting a friend... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-09 02:29:37 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #home town


Gail Jones: Australian literature is chronically underfunded — here's how to help it flourish

Literature funding has been cut brutally in recent years and writers' incomes are disastrously low. Yet books shape our national identity, forming an often invisible bedrock for the wider economy. Continue reading at The Conversation

[ The Conversation | 2020-11-08 19:05:31 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #national identity #wider economy #australian literature


A modest rebel: The paradoxical personality of Eleanor Roosevelt

The first lady was both a brave feminist and a shy Victorian, David Michaelis writes. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2020-11-06 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Ellery Lloyd | 'We absolutely didn’t want to make Emmy a demon'

This January, crime will pay — for publishers at least. It’s a strong month for nefarious tales of all hues but the best psychological thriller in ages comes from a brand new name, Ellery Lloyd, a pseudonym for husband-and-wife writing team Collette Lyons and Paul Vlitos. Their first book... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-04 10:27:16 UTC ]
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A F Steadman | 'I really didn’t know if anyone would like it, so I was very shocked'

Though publishing deals are standard fair in the pages of The Bookseller, it is rare for them to make her whirlwind publishing journey a splash in the mainstream press. But this was the case last month, when 28-year-old début author A F Steadman’s fantasy adventure series Skandar and the... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-10-14 05:47:38 UTC ]
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Your DNA didn’t change, Ancestry.com’s science did

Where did you come from? It’s a question many people never consider, but some are curious and the best answer to that, aside from lots of time in archives, historical societies, libraries and cemeteries, is a DNA test. You have multiple options, but the leader is Ancestry.com and it is always... Continue reading at Betanews

[ Betanews | 2020-09-13 08:36:25 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #historical societies #dna test #latest information #ll find #libraries


Cable news profits from its obsession with Trump. Viewers are the only victims.

In a previous story, I demonstrated that the quantity of coverage devoted by the print media to Donald Trump is without historical precedent. In 2018, “Trump” was the fourth most-used word in the New York Times. On average, Trump was directly mentioned two to three times in every article, and... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review

[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-09-08 18:00:03 UTC ]
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In Gail Tsukiyama’s ‘The Color of Air,’ characters reel in the wake of the Mauna Loa volcanic eruption

Tsukiyama’s first novel in nearly a decade takes readers to the 1930s Hawai’i of her Japanese father, where sugar was king and labor was hard. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2020-07-20 12:07:23 UTC ]
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Why the President Didn’t Want the World to Read Mary Trump’s Story

The new memoir takes you inside a dysfunctional American family—and into Donald Trump’s mind. Continue reading at Slate

[ Slate | 2020-07-09 19:25:33 UTC ]
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Lacy Crawford’s ‘Notes on a Silencing’ is a haunting exploration of the systematic ways assault victims are ignored

Crawford’s memoir looks back at her own assault at a prestigious boarding school. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2020-07-05 08:02:09 UTC ]
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What Buyers Liked—and Didn’t Like—About the Virtual NewFronts

The first-ever virtual NewFronts is in the books. Adweek has already rounded up the most memorable moments from last week's events, and now it's time for the buyers to have their say. We granted buyers anonymity to tell us what they liked--and didn't like--about the 2020 Digital Content... Continue reading at AdWeek

[ AdWeek | 2020-06-29 17:23:22 UTC ]
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Could Obama have stopped Putin’s election interference? A new book argues he didn’t think he needed to.

Review of ‘Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference” by David Shimer Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2020-06-25 05:00:11 UTC ]
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I Didn’t Have a Plan: The Millions Interviews Nick Flynn

My approach to memoir writing demands a different schedule. It may be more organized. I take notes, I write in condensed bursts. I do that with poetry also, but the process is more alchemic. It’s uncontainable. It’s fluid, I can drift in another realm. The post I Didn’t Have a Plan: The Millions... Continue reading at The Millions

[ The Millions | 2020-05-29 10:00:01 UTC ]
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Hodder & Stoughton buys book on embracing the average by Eleanor Ross

Hodder & Stoughton will publish Good Enough: The Myth of Success and How to Celebrate the Joy in Average by journalist Eleanor Ross.  Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-21 11:30:07 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #hodder stoughton #hodder