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Merciless
Waiting on the roadside. What for? To be ticked off, Ground and minced, A pile of drying meat Left to rot and repel Everyone but hungry worms Obese, rolling heavily Yet famished, craving flesh. Is it worth the wait? Don’t peer over my shoulder. It’s just scribbles on parchment. Worry not, it’s but a vain…
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Disintegrating
Dreams fall apart In my hands Seep through my fingers Into the cracks Through the floor And into the river Of tears and sweat Flowing down the canyons Of the aged face where Dead dreams rot and fester Un-lived, unrealised, gone Then turn to bitter dust Carried by the winds Across the valleys Over the…
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Ready Player One – A Dystopian Cliché?
Ernest Cline’s highly popular novel, Ready Player One, has been widely acclaimed for its originality and deep immersion into the 1980s, the decade when the video-gaming as we know it today set root in the form of hugely popular video and arcade games. The readers who remember or admire this decade can get an instant…
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The Muse: Burton and Barthes
Jessie Burton again turns to the past to harness inspiration for her second book, The Muse. This time the plot moves back and forth between the 1930s civil-war-ravaged Spain and the 1960s London, yet the issue at hand is not merely another historical novel, but a much more universal topic that hits quite close to…
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Writer’s Block: Getting Out of the Rut
I’ve been working on my novel long enough to expect to get stuck in a rut at least once a week. What I make sure, though, is that these ‘recovery periods’ as I call them, do not last for long. Sometimes you can get overwhelmed, tired, stressed out, or simply frightened and short periods of…
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Good Omens: Books, Bikers, and a Bentley
This is one of the very few books that has managed to leave me in tears (of joy and uncontrolled laughter) after every few pages. Good Omens, written by the unsurpassable Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, is irreverently hilarious revolving around an attempted Armageddon messed up by the common endeavor by a scatterbrained Satanist nun,…
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The Miniaturist: Book Review
Jessie Burton’s debut, The Miniaturist, derives inspiration from a 17th-century hobby for young wives, an ostentatious curiosity cabinet on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, that was built in the late 17th century, commissioned by Petronella Oortman, who wanted a replica of the luxurious townhouse in which she lived in the centre of Amsterdam. Burton’s…
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The Worm
A worm Lives in my throat Gnaws at the core The rotten apple Force-fed every day Eggs pregnant with doubt Wants me to shout Whenever they say ‘Hold your tongue’ ‘Speak not your mind’ It itches me into speech Piercing and clear Muffled in vain Unstoppable ebb and flow Wriggle turns to whisper Moving through…
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Caraval: All About the Game
I enjoy carnivals, circuses, harlequins, masks, mystery, and the complete overturning and subversion of social norms, rules, and conventions that goes with them. One of my favourite books is Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus where all of these reach a certain peak (The Stitched-up Girl), and I had something similar in mind when I…
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Adichie’s Defense of Feminism
The word feminist has been ladened with a load of negative baggage: you hate men, you burn bras, you hate your own tradition, you think women are better than men, you don’t wear make-up, you don’t shave, you’re always angry, you don’t have a sense of humour, you don’t use deodorant, etc. In her 2012…
Myths & Stories 