LEO BOIX reviews Cuban poet Carlos Pintado; Mexican poet Diana Garza Islas; Mexican American writer and critic Rigoberto Gonzalez; and Brazilian poet Haroldo de Campos
The lost horizons of adolescence
ANGUS REID applauds the portrait of two women in a lyrical and compassionate study of sex, shame and nostalgia
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
JOHN GREEN takes issue with a mainstream novel designed to denigrate the GDR
New releases from Nadia Reid, Manic Street Preachers and Mathias Eick
ANNA SERGI recommends the first UK exhibition of a remarkable female photographer who studied the impact of mafia violence on everyday life
The bard tunes into the message crooned by the newly self-appointed masters of the universe
It is painful that Donald Trump used David Bowie’s music during his campaign when the singer’s work was directly critical of his politics, judges PETER KENWORTHY
Two Sisters
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
THERE is a moment in David Grieg’s new play about nostalgia for the lost horizons of adolescence when the three adult characters, having partied themselves to oblivion, are gently laid to sleep like Bunraku puppets by a chorus of attentive teenagers. It is an unexpectedly moving piece of stagecraft that emphasises Grieg’s theme: that the adolescent, and the memory of adolescence, manipulates the adult.
Emma (Jess Hardwick) a smug and pregnant lawyer, has rented a caravan at the holiday park in Fife where the family once spent summers. She wants to write a novel. Her older sister (Shauna MacDonald) has been caught shagging the plumber and is taking time out from her marriage and kids. And the hippy hunk Lance (Erik Olson) who spun the discs decades before is still there as handyman and DJ.
Thus begins a gentle dance of recognition, rivalry and regret.
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