Reviews of Test Dept, Madli Marje Gildemann, and Heinz Holliger and Marie-Lise Schupbach
Latest editorial
Gothic greatness in Sean O'Brien's page-turners
JOHN GREEN appreciates an informative and readable account of the nation state and its current dilemmas, but doubts the solutions this author has to offer
JOHN MCINALLY recommends that this rational, reasonable and devastating case against the End Of Life Bill be read by every serious socialist activist
CHRIS SEARLE urges you not to miss Mark Sanders’ three night residency at Cafe Oto, Dalston, London
JENNY MITCHELL surveys the work of Hurvin Anderson, now a centrepiece of Britain’s white-dominated art establishment, and explores some of the complexities it opens up about British Caribbean identity
SOPHIE STOLL wallows in a fine live recording of old blues-infused folk songs immersed in American blue-collar culture
ANGUS REID and MARIA DUARTE review DJ Ahmet, Redoubt, They Will Kill You, and The Magic Faraway Tree
Quartier Perdu
by Sean O’Brien
(Comma Press, £9.99)
THE GOTHIC tale is to literature what the tardigrade is to animal biology — an astonishingly adaptable and resilient form. It was established by William Thomas Beckford and Horace Walpole, popularised by Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens and rejuvenated by modern practitioners such as Angela Carter, Sarah Waters and Stephen King.
It ought to be running out of steam by now, stuck in a rut of familiar images and over-rehearsed language. Not as far as Sean O’Brien is concerned. His second story collection Quartier Perdu includes old fashioned spine-chillers, intensely lyrical tales of ambiguous perception and in-your-face stories of supernatural threat.
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