The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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A rip-roaring historical romp through the author’s ancestors
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JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
The Broken Boy
by Patrick Cockburn
OR Books, £14.53
PATRICK COCKBURN is well-known as a Middle East war correspondent. He was left with a limp after falling victim as a child to the outbreak of polio in Co Cork in 1956.
His 2005 memoir of the epidemic has been republished, and includes a perspective on Covid gleaned from his observations of the spread and treatment of the “Kent variant” from his home in Canterbury.
His account of polio conveys powerfully the sense of panic and fear among parents, and the traumas suffered by children in isolation hospitals under the care of often insensitive and even cruel nursing staff.
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