ANDREW MURRAY surveys a quaking continent whose leaders have no idea how to respond to an openly contemptuous United States
The shop floor stories British fiction ignores
Our homegrown literary scene seems stuck in a bit of a middle-class bubble with a key sector deeply unrepresented in the stories it tells: retail workers. Ireland and the US do much better, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Based on his experience of Haringey Council Councillor MARK BLAKE believes only a radical policy rethink will reconnect councils with the alienated constituencies they are supposed to serve
Last week the CPUSA launched a new Rapid Response project aimed at mobilising a popular resistance to policies enacted by the new government. CAMERON HARRISON explains
THE British fiction scene just doesn’t support enough novels about working in shops. This thought popped into my head while reading two recent novels, which both build on retail experience.
Both are, rightly, I think, highly recommended. Neither are British. The absent shopworker is another sign of how the current British fiction scene doesn’t really reflect the Britain we live in. Some 2.7 million Brits — nearly a tenth of the workforce — work in retail. But like a lot of other working people, their lives are not well reflected in British novels.
The first book is Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident, which appeared in paperback this year. It’s a funny, bittersweet comedy about being a young adult, about those first steps when you make your best friends and worst choices.
More from this author
What’s behind the sudden wave of centrist ‘understanding’ about the real nature of Starmerism and its deep unpopularity? SOLOMON HUGHES reckons he knows the reasons for this apparent epiphany
They’re the problem it’s them: SOLOMON HUGHES on the freeloading flunkies of the Labour Party hoovering up VIP tickets to musical and sporting events
SOLOMON HUGHES examines how Labour has gone from blaming Tory deregulation for our economic woes to betting the nation's future on more of it
SOLOMON HUGHES reports on how a mega-wealthy hedge fund manager is dishing out cash to a ‘cringe’ Labour Party mediocrity with contempt for the voters
Similar stories
LEO BOIX selects the best books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction written by Latinx and Latin American authors published this year
JOHN GREEN is frustrated by an ambitious novel that stretches the imagination to breaking point
FIONA O’CONNOR relishes an artfully restrained novel whose style is perfectly in tune with the petit bourgeois existence it portrays
SOLOMON HUGHES explains the logic behind the ‘Ming vase strategy’ that’s firing up the thinking of Starmer and his gang of centrists