Category: Literary Criticism

• Against the Takedown

  Some thoughts on negative book reviews.

  Daniel Davis Wood

  September 12, 2019

  Book Reviewing

  Andrea Long Chu, Bret Easton Ellis, Helen Phillips, J.S. DeYoung

• The Ease of Criticism

  Some remarks by Robert Minto on the simplicity of the disposition that lends itself to critical reading and writing.

  Daniel Davis Wood

  June 12, 2019

  Book Reviewing

  Marilynne Robinson, Robert Minto

• Beyond the Praise

  An appreciation of Daniel Green’s reviews of Anna Burns’ Milkman and David Hayden’s short story collection Darker With the Lights On.

  Daniel Davis Wood

  May 10, 2019

  Book Reviewing

  Anna Burns, Daniel Green, David Hayden, Reading for Style

• Beckett Without Beckett

  Here’s another double-take. Earlier this week, at Splice, I reviewed Sam Thompson’s new novel, Jott, which depicts a lightly fictionalised version of Samuel Beckett and even includes fragments of pastiche representing the fictionalised Beckett’s outpourings: [But] Jott… is really a novel whose various elements — the characters and their situations, as well as styles of thought and…

  Daniel Davis Wood

  November 24, 2018

  Author Interviews, Notes and Queries

  Sam Thompson, Samuel Beckett

• Only Language

  Marc Nash’s Three Dreams in the Key of G is a difficult, demanding novel of absolutely virtuosic language. After David Hebblethwaite reviewed the novel for Splice, I put some questions to Nash about his creative ambitions and his process: Let’s kick off with something notable about the title: the assonance, four rounds of “/e/”. This…

  Daniel Davis Wood

  October 31, 2018

  Author Interviews, Notes and Queries

  Marc Nash

• Flash!

  This week, on Splice, I published a double-take, so to speak, on the flash fiction of Helen McClory. First up, I reviewed McClory’s two collections of short short stories, On the Edges of Vision and Mayhem & Death: It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes a short story by Helen McClory so distinctive, but without fail you’ll…

  Daniel Davis Wood

  October 12, 2018

  Author Interviews

  Helen McClory

• Obsession and Repetition

  At Splice, I’ve got a brief Q&A with the poet Katharine Kilalea, whose début novel OK, Mr Field is published this month by Faber: You’ve written a novel that has all the basic ingredients for tension, suspense, mystery — a plot to be complicated and resolved — but the tone, and the things you focus on…

  Daniel Davis Wood

  June 6, 2018

  Author Interviews, Notes and Queries

  Katharine Kilalea

• Zambra’s Intimacy

  Following on from Jason DeYoung’s review of Alejandro Zambra’s Not to Read, published this week on Splice, I spoke to Zambra’s translator, Megan McDowell, about Zambra’s profile as a critic: In your introduction [to Not to Read], you also say that by the time Alejandro Zambra “stopped contributing criticism to the Chilean press”, circa 2009, he had…

  Daniel Davis Wood

  May 3, 2018

  Author Interviews, Notes and Queries

  Alejandro Zambra, Megan McDowell

• Two Q&As

  Following on from Anna MacDonald’s review of Southerly by Jorge Consiglio, published earlier this month at Splice, I spoke to Consiglio’s translator, Cherilyn Elston, about the pleasures and challenges of bringing his work into English: What challenges did you face as a translator in retaining this quality of the stories, rendering so much of their power…

  Daniel Davis Wood

  February 23, 2018

  Author Interviews

  Cherilyn Elston, Chris Power, Jorge Consiglio

• The Songlines and the Songlines

  It’s been thirty years since Bruce Chatwin published The Songlines. That’s the kind of anniversary that usually elicits either a renewed celebration and revival of a work or a fresh attempt to boot the author up the arse, a la Nicolas Rothwell upon the publication of Chatwin’s letters. Intriguingly, with consummate skill and nuance, Richard Cooke has…

  Daniel Davis Wood

  October 2, 2017

  Book Reviewing, British and Irish Literature, Literary Criticism, Notes and Queries

  Bruce Chatwin, Richard Cooke