GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
The first great political novel of the Trump era
JOHN GREEN recommends an acute portrait of a troubled and divided US by Barbara Kingsolver
Insightful: Barbara Kingsolver
[David Wood]
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
Unsheltered
by Barbara Kingsolver
(Faber & Faber, £8.99)
IN THIS novel, Barbara Kingsolver carries forward the strong commitment to social justice and environmental care expressed so strongly in her previous books and demonstrates again that she is one of the US’s foremost socially critical writers of fiction.
Her narrative centres around an old house falling apart, a recurring symbol of social decay. It was built in a small US town which, created in the mid-19th century as a model community, is beholden to its wealthy entrepreneur founder who very much dominates and controls its citizens’ lives.
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