“It’s a kind of reincarnation without death: all these different lives we get to live in this one body, as ourselves.”
“When I try to imagine the addresses of the houses and apartments I lived in before my grandparents kidnapped me, I can’t remember anything.”
“How rich and diverse, how complex and non-linear the history of all women is.”
“All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now.”
In response to everything that’s happening on Twitter, we’ve set up our own account on Mastodon, and you can follow us there: we’re @canongatebooks@bookish.community.
In fact, we set up a whole instance on Mastodon, and we’ve invited some of our indie publishing and bookseller friends to join us there. So if you’re on Mastodon (or thinking of joining), why not follow not just us, but our friends @mrbsemporium, @severnhouse, @SerpentsTail, @ViperBooks, @FaberBooks, @DauntBooksPub, @ProfileBooks and @Indies_Alliance (and hopefully more joining us soon!).
If you want to join Mastodon, here are some possible places to start. Not sure what Mastodon is? Here’s an explainer!
On the 90th anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s birth, Elin Cullhed shares this insightful guide to the great writer’s work, from The Bell Jar, to the poems, to essays, journals and short fiction. (Elin’s wonderful novel Euphoria is an imaginative portrayal of the last year of Plath’s life.)
Elin Cullhed
Guardian
Emma Thompson’s tribute to her friend Alan Rickman, at an event at the BFI marking the publication of his diaries.
Gray: Beyond the Horizon is an interactive, multimedia journey through, round and about Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, from the extremely clever people at the Alasdair Gray Archive, with writer and digital designer Rachel Loughran.
Read an extract in the Observer from Faith, Hope and Carnage, the new book by Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan – a meditation on faith, art, music, grief and much more.
Observer
A wonderful review of Amy Liptrot’s The Instant in the New York Times:
“It feels revelatory to read serious, thoughtful writing on the sorts of experiences that so rarely receive it. The book is particularly sharp on the agony of a relationship’s aftermath in a digital age. At one point, Liptrot refers to the German word Fernweh (distance pain), which describes a reverse homesickness that makes you long for somewhere else. The Instant is the most elegant examination of the internet’s distance pain I have ever read.”
Evie Wyld
New York Times
It’s almost 20 years since the evening Yann Martel’s Life of Pi won the Booker Prize: read this exclusive interview with Martel about the (rigorous!) process of researching and writing the novel, as well as about religious belief, and the relationship between facts and storytelling.
The Booker Prizes