Books, Reviews and Jay Richardson

Juli Zeh - The Method

A riveting intellectual and emotional thriller set in a dystopian future

16 Mar 2012

(Harvill Secker) German author Juli Zeh’s translated 2009 novel is an Orwellian vision of the near future in which civilisation adheres to the stark principles of The Method. Priority is given to physical health over mental freedom of the mind with…

Helen Schulman - This Beautiful Life

Slightly outdated family drama that retains some timeliness and authenticity

1 Feb 2012

(Atlantic) With frightening believability, New York novelist Helen Schulman depicts a single, unthinking mouse-click tearing a family apart. Set in 2003, aspects of This Beautiful Life are outdated, but the key dramatic action of a 15-year-old boy…

Margaret Atwood - In Other Worlds

Slightly patchy collection of critical sci-fi essays

17 Oct 2011

(Virago) A companion to Margaret Atwood’s published science fiction rather than an essential purchase in its own right, In Other Worlds charts the Canadian Booker Prize winner’s relationship with SF from an early age, bringing a welcome clarity and…

The Death of Eli Gold

David Baddeil's fictional biography returns to his favourite themes of love, sex and commitment

7 Mar 2011

A comic meditation on the death of ‘the world’s greatest living writer’, the destructive selfishness of male desire and the passing of the last ‘great man’ as a species, David Baddiel’s fourth novel further explores his preoccupations with love, sex and…

Stefanie Pintoff - In the Shadow of Gotham

Deeply flawed turn of the 20th century crime drama full of the unnecessary

30 Nov 2010

(Penguin) A turn of the 20th century crime drama, In the Shadow of Gotham is deeply flawed. A damaged detective in a quiet town north of Manhattan is dragged back into New York’s seedy underbelly by a brutal murder, partnering with an eccentric…

Natalie Haynes - The Ancient Guide to Modern Life

3 Nov 2010

(Profile) With a rich broth of war, patricide and incest tales to draw upon, comedian Natalie Haynes champions the Greeks and Romans as role models and warning oracles for coping with the 21st century. A passionate authority on the classics, this…

Stewart Lee - How I Escaped My Certain Fate

23 Jul 2010

(Faber) Like Ezra Pound’s notes on The Waste Land if they’d been more cutting, self-critical and in awe of Johnny Vegas, Stewart Lee here transcribes and annotates the three stand-up shows that brought him back from disillusioned retirement in 2001…

Sam Lipsyte - The Ask

3 Jun 2010

(Old Street) Satire has become a dirty word in Britain, devalued through excessive application to intelligent but superficial, self-satisfied observations of our uncertain times. In the US though, where The Daily Show and The Onion set the standard…

Richard Herring - How Not to Grow Up!

28 Apr 2010

(Ebury Press) Expanding on his 2007 stand-up show, Oh Fuck, I’m 40!, this unlikely coming-of-age memoir chronicles Richard Herring’s hurtle towards middle age and the various crises it accelerated. Unmarried, childless and avowedly immature, the…

Alex Horne - Wordwatching

7 Jan 2010

(Virgin Books) Alex Horne is a true logophile. He’s a lover of words, especially rare words, like ‘logophile’, that seldom make it into dictionaries. Or ‘bollo’, ‘pratdigger’ and ‘mental safari’, his own recent coinages that the comedian has been…

Amy MacKinnon - Tethered

5 Feb 2009

PSYCHODRAMA The most remarkable aspect of Tethered, Amy MacKinnon’s debut novel about a mortician drawn into the hunt for a missing child, is that the central character, Clara, an isolated, damaged woman, who devotes herself to beautifying the dead…

Laura Dockrill - Mistakes in the Background

30 Oct 2008

The emergence of a sassy-tongued poet who can relate to the yoof should be a good thing. And Laura Dockrill, aka MC Dockers, truly does seem to be articulating, in her unaffected, unchecked, stream of consciousness way, the existence of the Facebook…

Jacques Chessex - The Vampire of Ropraz

2 Oct 2008

CRIME NOVELLA Taking a true story, apparently, Swiss author Jacques Chessex has crafted a disconcerting novella of horrific sexual crime that alternately seduces and appals. Set against a bleak 1903 backdrop of rural belief in black magic, the Jura…

Helen FitzGerald - Dead Lovely

5 Jun 2008

CRIME NOVEL (Faber) Once I got beyond the fact that the murderer in this crime thriller-meets-chick lit novel resides on my Glasgow street, I found plenty to enjoy in Helen FitzGerald’s debut. Opening with Krissie’s confession that she’s cheated with…

Ed Park - Personal Days

8 May 2008

COMIC THRILLER (Jonathan Cape) Set in an unnamed New York company, Ed Park’s quirky debut begins like a Dilbert cartoon or a particularly deadpan episode of The Office. A group of interchangeably fireable wage slaves, their jobs ill-defined even to…

The Time of the Rebels

Travelogue by Matthew Colin

20 Sep 2007

A compelling account of the challenging and toppling of undemocratic governments by youth resistance groups across ‘the second world’, from Serbia to Georgia, through the Ukraine, Lebanon and beyond, Matthew Collin’s latest book is as much a tribute to…

A Light-Hearted Look at Murder

16 Jul 2007

BLACK COMEDY MARK WATSON A Light-Hearted Look at Murder (Chatto & Windus) (Image: © Emilie Fjola Sandy) Mark Watson has been described as ‘a Will Self with dignity’. Admittedly, it was in his spoof biography for the BBC2 comedy Time…