MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Squirming on the pin
MATTHEW HAWKINS sees past the purple prose to themes of rejection and ageing in the autobiographical fiction of Rupert Everett
MAKING THE BEST OF REJECTION: Rupert Everett at Munich Filmfestival 2015
[Pic: Harald Bischoff/CC] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
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
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
The American No
Rupert Everett, Abacus, £20
Somewhat mantra-like, the words favourite writer, gifted storyteller, literary star, writer, gifted writer, writer to his (aching) bones, sequentially appear on the jacket of The American No, a short-story collection penned by Rupert Everett.
Such peppering served to pique my awareness of clunkers like “one Sunday morning we found ourselves in the Kit Kat club as usual” and “she ran out into the bazaar, into the orange glare” and (on the loading of a hearse) “the bouncers secured the coffin to the brass rails and fastened the flowers on top before climbing in.”
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SARAH TROTT explores short fictional slices of life in the American midwest from a middle-aged and mostly female perspective
MATTHEW HAWKINS appreciates an interpretation in dance of James Baldwin’s landmark novel of doomed homosexual desire
MATTHEW HAWKINS is drawn into the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India
ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes a novel by a dazzling prose stylist and a subtle player of literary games