SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star
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England’s ghosts
ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends two collections of short stories that use a single location to connect the narratives, and explore the limits of our ability to understand the world
MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
The Hotel
Daisy Johnson, Jonathan Cape, £14.99
Barrowbeck
Andrew Michael Hurley, John Murray, £16.99
THESE books share a common origin. Commissioned as story sequences for Radio 4 by BBC producer Justine Willett, they were read by a distinguished cast of voice actors.
There are further similarities. They use the imagery and atmospheres of contemporary folk horror — a sense of foreboding, ambiguous perceptions, undercurrents of violence and a collision of the mythic with the mundane — to explore the influence of landscape on psychology.
Furthermore, both books focus on single locations and present a view of history in line with the fabulist Russell Hoban’s assertion that “the past is something that sticks to your shoes like cow shit.”
Similar stories
ANDREW HEDGECOCK relishes visual storytelling with no respect for genres, movements or styles
ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends the application of ‘Gothic Marxism’ for its memorable portrayal of the physical violence done to working people
ANDY HEDGECOCK invites readers to contribute short fiction to our arts pages, offers some guidance and picks a few favourites
ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends a collection of folk tales, each of which is dazzling flash of human experience, natural or supernatural