Edie: American Girl by Jean Stein is apparently one of the classic books on the sixties. After reading it, I can see why it’s garnered so many accolades. Prior to picking this up, I only really had vague notions of who Edie was, that all centred around her position as muse/decoration to Andy Warhol. Painstakingly compiled from interviews from the many that knew her, whether they be family, friends, or hangers-on (both famous and non-famous) covering her family history, childhood, explosion on to the New […]
…and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him
Out on a lonely stretch of desert highway, there’s a cop. This cop is not the sort you’d ever want to meet, let alone so far from civilisation, but a bunch of unrelated travellers – a family, a couple, a writer and his road trip manager – are about to do so anyway, and find themselves entering a living nightmare in the aptly named town of Desperation. A lot of this book feels incredibly cinematic, with the images of the open door of the abandoned […]
Sex and skullduggery
The Queen’s Bastard is set in an extremely thinly veiled alternate Elizabethan era Europe, where Queen Lorraine has sat on the throne of Aulun for years, keeping a firm grip throughout the machinations of her rivals, Sandalia and Irina (Lorraine’s name kept making me snigger, sounding as it does far more like the name of your nan’s bingo friend than a queen) Lorraine has never married, instead dangling her virginity and hand in marriage as prospective cards for an alliance. She has, however, had a […]
“What am I going to say if I end up standing in front of God the Father Almighty and He asks me to explain why I did it. That it was my job?”
For some years now, I’ve been reading through the works of Stephen King in chronological order. I’d avoided picking this one up for a while, having watched the movie a zillion times, but while the storyline held no surprises for me, what did surprise me was just how insanely good it was regardless, with King’s words rapidly catching hold of me and not letting go until I’d stayed up way past bedtime, breathlessly turning pages and gulping back tears. In case you’re one of the […]