With thousands of AI‑written, edited or ‘polished’ books being sold, LAURA BEERS hears an eerie echo of Orwell’s ‘novel‑writing machines’
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A sickness at the heart of things
The B*easts has disquieting things to say about the sexualisation of young children, says MARY CONWAY
Cogent: Monica Dolan
[Alan Harris]
ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
Death comes for Liberals, entitled murder, Vatican hit squads, and fraternising with the Blitz killer
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GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
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The B*easts
Bush Theatre, London
THAT fine actor Monica Dolan both writes and performs this shocking tale of our times in which a pre-pubescent child makes a disturbed yet purposeful bid for attention.
Lila, from an early age, has shown an increasingly insistent obsession with the female body and, in particular, with the power of female breasts. So much so that, aged eight, she demands of her defenceless mother breasts all of her own.
The result is a trip to Brazil for cosmetic surgery and the appearance of double D-cup Jordan-sized breasts on a child so young that all hell is unleashed. Mother Karen is arrested and charged with child abuse.
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