ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
Biscuits (Assorted)
by Jenny Robins
(Myriad Editions, £16.99)
JENNY ROBINS has cooked up the perfect lockdown treat in this award-winning graphic novel. Friendship, between both friends and strangers, is the sweet centre of a book which won the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition in 2018.
Biscuits (Assorted) is sometimes bitter-sweet but never saccharine. Each woman depicted is authentic and instantly recognisable and individualistic. They do not fit the cookie-cutter stereotype.
There’s Lucy, staying sane in her call-centre job by playing a game of profanity bingo. Her handmade card shows squares citing “Cock” and “Piss off” among the many customer responses to her cold-calling and she leaps up, shouting “BINGO!”, to a complete absence of response from her workmates.
Sexual harassment on Britain’s railways is rising sharply, according to the British Transport Police, yet too many women still feel reporting is futile. LYNNE WALSH asks why the burden of safety all too often remains on women themselves
KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
LEO BOIX introduces a bold novel by Mapuche writer Daniela Catrileo, a raw memoir from Cuban-Russian author Anna Lidia Vega Serova, and powerful poetry by Mexican Juana Adcock



