Bridget Jones’s hollow feminism
The novels portrayed the working woman of the Nineties as a hot mess. By laughing at her, we laughed at…
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Rereadings
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Rereadings
How we misread The Great Gatsby
The greatness of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel lies in its details. But they are often overlooked.
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Anthony Burgess’s Napoleon complex
In Napoleon Symphony, the life of the French statesman was transformed into a virtuoso romp that still dazzles 50 years…
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Banned, burned and reviled: what was so radical about Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls?
The story of one of the most famous, infamous and beloved Irish novels of the 20th century.
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Virginia Woolf’s politics of peace
Published between the wars, Woolf’s essay Three Guineas still has lessons for today’s conflict-ravaged world.
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Stephen King’s Carrie and the horror of girlhood
The triumph of the writer’s debut novel, published 50 years ago, is its understanding of a teenage girl’s destructive anger.
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Cormac McCarthy’s art of war
In Blood Meridian the author reaches the dark heart of the American novel – where violence is timeless.
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Simone de Beauvoir and the art of loss
Sixty years ago, the French writer’s unflinching memoir of her mother’s death tested the limits of her existentialism.
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