I don’t regard myself as an academic, a journalist or a non-fiction writer. So reviews may seem a curious form for me to write. But I would argue that there is also something creative about concocting a coherent book review. It’s a statement that is, necessarily, partial and entirely personal and is also an exercise in constructing a ‘voice’ and a point of view for getting across your message.
Beyond that leap, the next scene is entirely different. The characters have vanished. We find ourselves in the transept of a church, and by placing it ‘in Gardiner Street’ an exterior reference, we seem distanced from it. Here the narrator is omniscient, third person, and detached.
If I was doing an MA in Procrastination, I would no doubt earn a Distinction. I’m easily distracted, lazy, bit of a flake and quite often prefer a night smoozing at some poetry reading or book launch, rather than sitting at home and actually getting some work done. It’s the age old story of someone who likes to call themselves a writer, but puts off the writing until it can no longer be avoided.
Now endorsed by critics as one of the most prominent post-war American writers, Capote has been largely viewed as a writer who, as Aleb Kerbs wrote in the New York Times obituary, “squandered his time, talent and health on the pursuit of celebrity, riches and pleasure”.
Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955 and spent most of her early life in rural eastern Kentucky. On her website, she writes about the freedom she had as a child, roaming the woodland around her home and catching ‘wild creatures’ which – apart from mice and snakes – she was allowed to bring into the house.
