Maternal Ambivalence and Imposter Syndrome: My experience of undergraduate, archival research
Words by Saskia May Sunshine was flickering through the green beech trees as the bus dropped me at The Keep, University of Sussex. The carpark of the archival centre was…
Romanticising the Real: Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love (2018)
Words by Megan Whitehead, Staff Writer If I was ever forced onto a desert island and only had one item to bring with me, I would pick Dolly Alderton’s ‘Everything…
Review: I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Words by Lucy Atwood If you like reading in bed, late at night then I’m Thinking of Ending Things might not be the book for you. It’s a unique, unsettling,…
Book Review: Assembly by Natasha Brown (2021)
Words by Saskia May, Books Editor Reflecting on the colonialist, classist structure of British society, Assembly is a remarkably powerful book that takes a poetic and poignant look at Black…
Book review: 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World – Elif Shafak
Words by Paige Braithwaite, Staff Writer TW: Sexual assault and abuse ‘10 minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World’(2019), by British-Turkish author Elif Shafak is an absorbing and poignant…
Privilege, racism, and social satire in Kiley Reid’s Such A Fun Age (2019)
Words by Saskia May, Books Editor Kiley Reid’s debut novel, Such a Fun Age (2019) is an observant, entertaining, and current examination of privilege and racism in the US. Reid…
Maternal Ambivalence in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child
Raising fascinating and current questions around motherhood and female identity, Lessing’s The Fifth Child, with its spectre of the ambivalent mother, is an immersive look into the uncanny Words by…
Book Review: The Vanishing Half
Words by Saskia May, Books Editor TW: Racism and violence The New York Times #1 bestseller, The Vanishing Half (2020), is a story with a nonlinear narrative that traverses decades,…
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name Review
Words by Saskia May, Books Editor Published as a ‘biomythography’, Zami (1982) is Audre Lorde’s only novel. Loosely based on her childhood in New York in the 1930s and 40s,…
Review: The Love Letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West
Words by Saskia May ‘I am glad that our love has weathered so well’, renowned modernist writer Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary in October 1940. Woolf was, of course,…
Metafiction-Realism and Marxist Writing in Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You?
By Molly Openshaw On the 7th September, Sally Rooney released her third and arguably most anticipated novel yet. After the release of Normal People, which was subsequently adapted into a…
Review – When the Lights Went Out : Britain in the Seventies
Words by Adam Kerry A new London airport in the Thames, referenda on EU membership, and radical zines. All sounds very 2010s right? Well yes and no. This is actually…
Review: Klara in the Sun
Words By Hanani Aslam Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro’s eighth novel and first book since winning the Nobel Prize in 2017, presents an elegant tale about artificial intelligence, love,…
Review – Boys in Zinc by Svetlana Alexievich
Words by Oliver Mizzi When we think about Afghanistan we think of America’s long war – the forever war. We don’t think about the early days of the Afghan tragedy.…
2021 Literary Adaptation to Look Out For
Words by Molly Openshaw & Robyn Cowie Here is a taste of the book to film/television adaptations we can expect to see through the rest of 2021. Many are hotly…
Interview: Verity Spott
Verity Spott is an alumnus from the University of Sussex and a Brighton based poet about politics and social issues. Verity co-runs the event Horseplay in Brighton which is a…
IWD 2021: Writing as a Woman in Brighton
Brighton based writer of “One Morning, One Moment” discusses the role of gender in writing and how women are represented in literature. Words by Molly Openshaw Sarah Rayner is the…
The Romance Genre Needs Diversity
While the Romance genre thrives this Valentine’s day, we need to diversify our bookshelves.
Review: Zadie Smith – Intimations
Words by Jerry Silvester Not every piece of art relating to an unpleasant event consumes us in a way we want to resist. In fact, sometimes just as we’re ready…
Black History Month 2020 Books Overview
Words by Eric Barrell This year, the Black Lives Matter protests after the death of George Floyd marked the biggest civil rights movement the world had seen in decades. In…