Paul white zed books full#

These are: BURIED GARDEN by Chris McCabe (Penned in the Margins), a dream-like search for London’s lost poets in Stoke Newington’s Abney Park Cemetery THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH (Penguin Classics), Leo Tolstoy’s hypnotic novella told from the perspective of the titular character’s deathbed, which brought back the almost bodily feeling of awe I felt reading the Russians as a teenager DANCING IN ODESSA by Ilya Kaminsky (Faber & Faber), a poetry collection that reads like Chagall’s paintings, full of vivid and brutal images of death and dancing KITS WILDERNESS by David Almond (Hodder Children’s Books), a YA novel in which children play a game called death in the abandoned pits of a mining town in the midlands JUNKY by William Boroughs (Penguin Classics), a violent and brilliant novel that talks directly to the death wish at the heart of addiction and WINTER ROSE by Patricia A. When looking back on this year’s reading, a theme emerges: death looms large in most of the books that have stayed with me. I am currently reading Helen Garner’s diaries (Text Publishing), where she permitted herself to redact entries but not to rewrite them, and which show her writer’s ability to pin down life alongside an unpretentious intellect. Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book (Sort of Books) combined her wonderful storytelling ability with deeper notes of adult sadness and foresight. Towards the end of the year, I read Shen Fu’s Six Records of a Life Adrift (Hackett), which is more like four records, as two are still missing, and is again an oddly present distillation of everyday life in Qing dynasty China. I also enjoyed Claire Messud’s short novel on family and privilege, as set in one of Sydney’s great manor houses, A Dream Life (Tablo), and Han Suyin’s crisp, almost noir-ish wartime romance, Winter Love (McNally Editions). What seems to be memoir is rendered utterly immediate in Ditlevsen’s commanding and direct present tense as she recounts her struggle to find herself as a writer outside the circumstances under which she was born. In a year where reading has been difficult, something that stands out is Tove Ditlevsen’s Copenhagen Trilogy (Penguin), translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman, which I first spied as three separate pink and black and white volumes on a friend’s dining table. But it is, as one might expect, bleak, disturbing, and gorgeous. Whether the forthcoming book works as well as listening to Ellis drawlingly evoke the LA of his youth, while musing indirectly on sexual violence and trauma post-MeToo, I don’t know yet. But the most hypnotic literary experience I had this year was listening to Bret Easton Ellis’s serialisation of his novel (or memoir?) in progress, The Shards (Swift Press). Sam Johnson-Schlee’s beautiful, deeply researched Living Rooms (Peninsula Press) had me thinking about objects and fabrics in new ways. Julie Myerson’s Nonfiction was an exquisitely painful and moving exploration of parenting a child with addiction. Rebecca May Johnson’s Small Fires (Pushkin Press) was a serious delight. Nuar Alsadir’s Animal Joy (Fitzcarraldo Editions), on psychoanalysis and clown school, gave me a lot of joy, as did Jamieson Webster’s fascinating essays in Disorganisation and Sex (Divided). This year I read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (Penguin) for the first time its steady, intricate unfolding is extraordinary.

Finally, BEYOND THE THRESHOLD (dpr-barcelona), Zaida Muxi Martinez’s history of the women whose contributions to architecture and urban planning have been suppressed, reminds us that other ways of imagining society have always existed, but we have chosen not to listen.

Caroline Walker’s monograph JANET (Anomie), with an essay from critic Hettie Judah, is a visual exploration of this theme, depicting the artist’s mother at her invisible work in the home. The public conversation about unpaid and poorly paid carework has faltered post-Covid, but both Edouard Louis’s A WOMAN’S BATTLES AND TRANSFORMATIONS (Penguin Random House), his account of his mother’s life under poverty and patriarchy, and Lynne Tillman’s MOTHERCARE (Soft Skull), about caring for her elderly mother while navigating the American healthcare system, should serve to remind, as does feminist theorist Nancy Fraser in CANNIBAL CAPITALISM (Verso), that capitalism remains a guzzler of care, and this is an unsustainable position. With your help, we’ll be able to continue championing new writing and art into 2023 and beyond. The White Review depends on reader support, so please do donate if you are able to – we’re also offering some exclusive rewards to those who support us, including book bundles and manuscript consultations (which could make a great gift for a writer in your life!) Every year, The White Review asks friends and contributors what books they’ve enjoyed reading and rereading.

Paul white zed books