POOR THINGS: BELLA BAXTER’S TRANSFORMATIONS

[WARNING SPOILERS] I was very much surprised, or rather dismayed, to read about Giórgos ‘Yorgos’ Lanthimos’s new film Poor Things, being a big fan of the novel but not at all of the director. Neither The Lobster (2015) nor The Favourite (2018) are films I have enjoyed and, to be honest, I fail to understand […]

NO MEAN CITY: RECONSIDERING CLASS

The volume that interests me today is a novel: No Mean City (1935), ‘the classic novel of the Glasgow slum underworld’ as the cover of the Corgi edition announces. Apparently, this novel has its origins in the short stories written by Gorbals unemployed baker Alexander McArthur. They were polished for publication by journalist H. Kingsley […]

IRVINE WELSH IN TOWN, 25 YEARS AFTER TRAINSPOTTING

I had a truly weird experience yesterday attending Irvine Welsh’s presentation of his novel Un polvo en condiciones, Francisco González’s translation of A Decent Ride (Anagrama, 2015). This is the tenth novel in Welsh’s long list, which also includes four short story collections and also plays. I decided to attend because I was meeting a […]

TRYING TO CATCH UP…: A BOOK ON RECENT (SCOTTISH) LITERATURE

I have given myself the task of checking my university library’s catalogue and select a variety of volumes for summer reading, in an attempt to catch up with the novelties in the areas I’m interested in. The function of journals used to be exactly that: keeping researchers informed about the latest advances in a given […]