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497 reviews
The Unseen Anzac: How an Enigmatic Explorer Created Australiaa's World War I Photographs by Jeff Maynard
[A] thrilling, wonderfully researched book. Every Australian should read it. Almost every page leaves you astonished.
Tony Wright, The Saturday Age
George Hubert Wilkins is not a name which everybody knows [but] it should be. As a collection of ripping yarns The Unseen Anzac would be hard to beat, and it’s extraordinary that Wilkins has dropped out of the public consciousness.
Nick Goldie, Cooma-Monaro Express
[This] understated, well-honed biography reveals the maverick, eternally restless Wilkins as a man who refused to define his life through war alone.
The Saturday Paper
Hubert Wilkins was one of the most extraordinary individuals Australia has produced … Maynard is a great explorer too, tracking down long-forgotten letters and diaries … A great ride.
Sunday Territorian
Tony Wright, The Saturday Age
George Hubert Wilkins is not a name which everybody knows [but] it should be. As a collection of ripping yarns The Unseen Anzac would be hard to beat, and it’s extraordinary that Wilkins has dropped out of the public consciousness.
Nick Goldie, Cooma-Monaro Express
[This] understated, well-honed biography reveals the maverick, eternally restless Wilkins as a man who refused to define his life through war alone.
The Saturday Paper
Hubert Wilkins was one of the most extraordinary individuals Australia has produced … Maynard is a great explorer too, tracking down long-forgotten letters and diaries … A great ride.
Sunday Territorian
The Paula Principle: how and why women work below their level of competence by Tom Erskine Schuller
A really interesting book — and an encouraging one, despite its central premise. It provides an absorbing and accessible look at what exactly holds today’s women back — and what we can do about it. The Paula Principle deserves to become an instant classic.
Melissa Benn, Author of What Should We Tell Our Daughters?
The Paula Principle is an important book. Tom Schuller presents fresh reasons which explain women's continued disadvantage in the workplace and what can be done about this. The book's case studies and examples also make the book eminently readable.
Sue Williamson, Senior Lecturer, School of Business, Australian Defence Force Academy
Why do women tend to outperform men in education, yet earn less in the labour market? In this important new book, Tom Schuller shows that gender inequity should concern all of us. A society where women work below their level of competence is missing out on the chance to reach its potential. With pithy statistics, fascinating interviews and entertaining literary references, this book explains why the Paula Principle has emerged, and how we might work together to fix it.
Andrew Leigh MP, Author of The Economics of Just About Everything
Tom Schuller writes candidly on an issue too many men would rather not confront - why working women operate below their level of competence. The glass ceiling in learning is all but shattered. This book brilliantly establishes why now it’s time for the work place.
Jon Snow
Essential reading for anyone who thinks about the future of work; compelling evidence showing how unions help women and men build alternative working lives; and a powerful argument for radical changes to achieve genuine equality.
Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the TUC
In a world where women’s work, despite changes in the last decades, is still given less recognition than men's at every level, and where the gap is closing slowly if at all, it lifts the spirits to find Tom Schuller’s thoughtful book analysing with subtlety and elegance why this might be so. He reminds us, as if we needed reminding, that the problem of equality is by no means solved and needs continually to be rethought.
Ursula Owen, Founder-Director of Virago Press
It’s almost 50 years since the Equal Pay Act, women are doing brilliantly in education — and yet gender, and gender inequalities, are still huge issues. The Paula Principle tells us both why and why we should care. It’s a splendid analysis, a fascinating read — and a great way to understand just how differently women, as well as men, experience today’s reality. Just try Schuller’s test on page 230 with yourself and your family.
Alison Wolf (Professor The Baroness Wolf of Dulwich)
The path to equality thus far has involved women converging on traditionally male employment patterns, Schuller argues: now is the time for men to move towards traditionally female ones — to improve equality and work-life balance, and to make better use of our resources.
Jessica Abrahams, Prospect
A landmark book.
Mindtools
[Schuller’s] passion for social justice is stamped on every page of a study whose clarity and well researched insights are captivating.
Times Higher Education
Melissa Benn, Author of What Should We Tell Our Daughters?
The Paula Principle is an important book. Tom Schuller presents fresh reasons which explain women's continued disadvantage in the workplace and what can be done about this. The book's case studies and examples also make the book eminently readable.
Sue Williamson, Senior Lecturer, School of Business, Australian Defence Force Academy
Why do women tend to outperform men in education, yet earn less in the labour market? In this important new book, Tom Schuller shows that gender inequity should concern all of us. A society where women work below their level of competence is missing out on the chance to reach its potential. With pithy statistics, fascinating interviews and entertaining literary references, this book explains why the Paula Principle has emerged, and how we might work together to fix it.
Andrew Leigh MP, Author of The Economics of Just About Everything
Tom Schuller writes candidly on an issue too many men would rather not confront - why working women operate below their level of competence. The glass ceiling in learning is all but shattered. This book brilliantly establishes why now it’s time for the work place.
Jon Snow
Essential reading for anyone who thinks about the future of work; compelling evidence showing how unions help women and men build alternative working lives; and a powerful argument for radical changes to achieve genuine equality.
Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the TUC
In a world where women’s work, despite changes in the last decades, is still given less recognition than men's at every level, and where the gap is closing slowly if at all, it lifts the spirits to find Tom Schuller’s thoughtful book analysing with subtlety and elegance why this might be so. He reminds us, as if we needed reminding, that the problem of equality is by no means solved and needs continually to be rethought.
Ursula Owen, Founder-Director of Virago Press
It’s almost 50 years since the Equal Pay Act, women are doing brilliantly in education — and yet gender, and gender inequalities, are still huge issues. The Paula Principle tells us both why and why we should care. It’s a splendid analysis, a fascinating read — and a great way to understand just how differently women, as well as men, experience today’s reality. Just try Schuller’s test on page 230 with yourself and your family.
Alison Wolf (Professor The Baroness Wolf of Dulwich)
The path to equality thus far has involved women converging on traditionally male employment patterns, Schuller argues: now is the time for men to move towards traditionally female ones — to improve equality and work-life balance, and to make better use of our resources.
Jessica Abrahams, Prospect
A landmark book.
Mindtools
[Schuller’s] passion for social justice is stamped on every page of a study whose clarity and well researched insights are captivating.
Times Higher Education
Universal Harvester by John Darnielle
A slow-burn mystery/thriller whose characters are drawn together by an eerie discovery … Darnielle adeptly juggles multiple stories that collide with chaotic consequences somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Darnielle’s second novel opens like a dark suspense story; his descriptions of the VHS scenes are written in a deadpan style to evoke maximum dread. But he ultimately pursues a softer and more nuanced exploration of family and loss.
Kirkus
A captivating exploration of the vagaries of memory and inertia in middle America … [Universal Harvester] serves as a stellar encore after the success of [Darnielle's] debut novel, Wolf in White Van… Beneath the eerie gauze of this book, I felt an undercurrent of humanity and hope.
The Washington Post
[S]o wonderfully strange, almost Lynchian in its juxtaposition of the banal and the creepy, that my urge to know what the hell was going on caused me to go full throttle … [But] Darnielle hides so much beautiful commentary in the book’s quieter moments that you would be remiss not to slow down.
MTV News
A major work by an author who is quickly becoming one of the brightest stars in American fiction.
Los Angeles Times
An eerie but lovingly detailed delineation of a landscape that, like all landscapes, is part external reality and part memory … Darnielle understands that there are things writing can approach but must pass over in silence. He risks those silences; listen.
Colin Barrett, The Guardian
[Darnielle’s] writing is wonderful and his storytelling is unique and compelling.
Nudge
[Universal Harvester] starts like a spooky thriller, then opens out into a moving, beautifully etched picture of America’s lost and profoundly lonely.
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Guardian
[A] strange and unsettling story … Think Don DeLillo and David Lynch teaming up to write a book inspired by the Japanese horror movie Ringu.
Darragh McManus, Irish Independent
[A] taut thriller that captures the zeitgeist of the 90s.
Culturefly
A bewitching and eerily still piece of fiction. Darnielle has a gift for domestic detail and a nimble way of capturing large feelings without dwelling on them.
Ben Jeffrey, TLS
Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Darnielle’s second novel opens like a dark suspense story; his descriptions of the VHS scenes are written in a deadpan style to evoke maximum dread. But he ultimately pursues a softer and more nuanced exploration of family and loss.
Kirkus
A captivating exploration of the vagaries of memory and inertia in middle America … [Universal Harvester] serves as a stellar encore after the success of [Darnielle's] debut novel, Wolf in White Van… Beneath the eerie gauze of this book, I felt an undercurrent of humanity and hope.
The Washington Post
[S]o wonderfully strange, almost Lynchian in its juxtaposition of the banal and the creepy, that my urge to know what the hell was going on caused me to go full throttle … [But] Darnielle hides so much beautiful commentary in the book’s quieter moments that you would be remiss not to slow down.
MTV News
A major work by an author who is quickly becoming one of the brightest stars in American fiction.
Los Angeles Times
An eerie but lovingly detailed delineation of a landscape that, like all landscapes, is part external reality and part memory … Darnielle understands that there are things writing can approach but must pass over in silence. He risks those silences; listen.
Colin Barrett, The Guardian
[Darnielle’s] writing is wonderful and his storytelling is unique and compelling.
Nudge
[Universal Harvester] starts like a spooky thriller, then opens out into a moving, beautifully etched picture of America’s lost and profoundly lonely.
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Guardian
[A] strange and unsettling story … Think Don DeLillo and David Lynch teaming up to write a book inspired by the Japanese horror movie Ringu.
Darragh McManus, Irish Independent
[A] taut thriller that captures the zeitgeist of the 90s.
Culturefly
A bewitching and eerily still piece of fiction. Darnielle has a gift for domestic detail and a nimble way of capturing large feelings without dwelling on them.
Ben Jeffrey, TLS
South of Forgiveness by Thordis Elva, Tom Stranger
South of Forgiveness reads like group therapy: deep pain is unearthed and examined like a jewel beneath a light. Crucially, Elva has the humility to claim she has the same capacity for darkness as Stranger, yet the privilege and power he is afforded as a man means he is more inclined to commit violence … By owning the label ‘‘rapist’’ and exploring his motivations, Stranger allows the mythical perpetrator to be demystified. The monstrous shadow is given meek human form, allowing men’s actions, not women’s, to be interrogated. And through her informed analysis of gender inequality, Elva reveals the social mechanisms that create male sexual entitlement.
Lou Heinrich, Weekend Australian
What saves South of Forgiveness from being a book-length rehashing of old hurts interspersed with worthy sentiments about forgiveness, is the blossoming of Elva and Stranger’s personal quest into something larger. As they pick apart the whys of Stranger’s actions (while never for a moment excusing them), they have some important insights about the way our culture can lead young men to feel a dangerous sense of entitlement over women’s bodies … Some will find the idea of a rapist educating people about rape absurd and offensive … But the same things that make [Tom's] venture fraught might make it actually work … [A] genuine, wholehearted attempt to change the conversation around rape.
Emily Maguire, Sydney Morning Herald
An incredible achievement. Everyone could benefit from reading this book. I’m certainly richer as a result of having done so. Absolutely recommended.
Arni Arnason, UK rock band The Vaccines
Thordis and Tom take daring steps into the minefield of the most fragile issues of our times. By confronting the stigma of victim and perpetrator they give us valuable insight into the darker corners of our existence.
Andri Snaer Magnason, Author and Icelandic Presidential Candidate
A profoundly moving, open chested, and critical book. An exploration into sexual violence and self-knowledge that can only shine a healing light into the shrouded corners of our universal humanity. There is a disarming power in these pages that has the potential to change our language, shift our divisions, and invite us to be brave in discussing this pressing, global issue.
Pat Mitchell, Chair of the Sundance Institute and Women’s Media Center
Every man, woman and couple should read this book. And the woman and man that wrote it ought to be garlanded with medals. It’s an unprecedented achievement.
Sandi Toksvig
Written with sensitivity, courage and compassion, this book is a shared, outer and inner journey of recovery. In this intimate account of that journey, the story draws attention to one of the most overlooked perspectives regarding the act and meaning of rape: the shame of rape, harboured by the victim, belongs in fact to the perpetrator. Without any leanings toward self-indulgence, it is a deeply honest exploration of the dynamics of forgiveness and personal transformation. I felt as if I was with them (and their loved ones) on their journey. I will remember it and recommend it for a long time to come.
Dr Ian McCallum
Extraordinarily moving … Hats off to Elva and Stranger for a brave journey that might well change lives.
Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times
Both Elva and Stranger have been brave enough to publicly expose their separate vulnerabilities, in order to contribute to an important debate about sexual violence.
The Irish TImes
Elva and Stranger’s story … [is] as compelling and uncomfortable as it is complex. The resulting book, South of Forgiveness, is one the reader will barely be able to wrench themselves from.
Sunday Business Post Dublin
Very brave.
Catholic Herald
Lou Heinrich, Weekend Australian
What saves South of Forgiveness from being a book-length rehashing of old hurts interspersed with worthy sentiments about forgiveness, is the blossoming of Elva and Stranger’s personal quest into something larger. As they pick apart the whys of Stranger’s actions (while never for a moment excusing them), they have some important insights about the way our culture can lead young men to feel a dangerous sense of entitlement over women’s bodies … Some will find the idea of a rapist educating people about rape absurd and offensive … But the same things that make [Tom's] venture fraught might make it actually work … [A] genuine, wholehearted attempt to change the conversation around rape.
Emily Maguire, Sydney Morning Herald
An incredible achievement. Everyone could benefit from reading this book. I’m certainly richer as a result of having done so. Absolutely recommended.
Arni Arnason, UK rock band The Vaccines
Thordis and Tom take daring steps into the minefield of the most fragile issues of our times. By confronting the stigma of victim and perpetrator they give us valuable insight into the darker corners of our existence.
Andri Snaer Magnason, Author and Icelandic Presidential Candidate
A profoundly moving, open chested, and critical book. An exploration into sexual violence and self-knowledge that can only shine a healing light into the shrouded corners of our universal humanity. There is a disarming power in these pages that has the potential to change our language, shift our divisions, and invite us to be brave in discussing this pressing, global issue.
Pat Mitchell, Chair of the Sundance Institute and Women’s Media Center
Every man, woman and couple should read this book. And the woman and man that wrote it ought to be garlanded with medals. It’s an unprecedented achievement.
Sandi Toksvig
Written with sensitivity, courage and compassion, this book is a shared, outer and inner journey of recovery. In this intimate account of that journey, the story draws attention to one of the most overlooked perspectives regarding the act and meaning of rape: the shame of rape, harboured by the victim, belongs in fact to the perpetrator. Without any leanings toward self-indulgence, it is a deeply honest exploration of the dynamics of forgiveness and personal transformation. I felt as if I was with them (and their loved ones) on their journey. I will remember it and recommend it for a long time to come.
Dr Ian McCallum
Extraordinarily moving … Hats off to Elva and Stranger for a brave journey that might well change lives.
Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times
Both Elva and Stranger have been brave enough to publicly expose their separate vulnerabilities, in order to contribute to an important debate about sexual violence.
The Irish TImes
Elva and Stranger’s story … [is] as compelling and uncomfortable as it is complex. The resulting book, South of Forgiveness, is one the reader will barely be able to wrench themselves from.
Sunday Business Post Dublin
Very brave.
Catholic Herald
The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker
This bright debut from Kayla Rae Whitaker reworks the familiar buddy novel into a story of two young women united by ambition, artistic talent, and enterprise … A vivid, intensely rendered portrait.
The Saturday Age, Pick of the Week
The Animators crackles with intelligence; Whitaker’s remarkable ear for dialogue reads as if Aaron Sorkin wrote an episode of Girls. She expertly captures the dynamic that exists between women when they’re alone with each other, when performative parts of femininity dissolve.
Sian Cain, The Guardian
As fresh and unique as it is relatable … Charting the friendship of Sharon and Mel, who become an award-winning animation duo, it weaves in nostalgic elements while engrossing you in their thicker-than-water bond. Funny and moving, it’ll stay with you long after the book is back on the shelf.
Elle Australia, Book of the Month
Suffused with humour, tragedy, and deep insights about art and friendship, this lively novel will make you wish Mel and Sharon's films existed off the page.
Who Weekly
Female friendship has rarely been described so expertly than in this buzzy tale of two pals working on an animated film, the success of which drives a wedge between them.
Marie Claire
An engrossing, exuberant ride through all the territories of love — familial, romantic, sexual, love of friends, and, perhaps above all, white-hot passion for the art you were born to make ... I wish I’d written The Animators.
Emma Donoghue, Author of Room and the Wonder
A compulsively readable portrait of women as incandescent artists and intimate collaborators.
Elle
[An] outstanding debut … Whitaker skillfully charts the creative process, its lulls and sudden rushes of perfect inspiration. And in the relationship between Mel and Sharon, she has created something wonderful and exceptional: a rich, deep, and emotionally true connection that will certainly steal the hearts of readers.
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
An exquisite portrait of a life-defining partnership … [The Animators] creeps up on you and then swallows you whole.
Kirkus, Starred Review
A wildly original novel that pulses with heart and truth. That this powerful exploration of friendship, desire, ambition and secrets manages to be ebullient, gripping, heartbreaking, and deeply, deeply funny is a testament to Whitaker’s formidable gifts. I was so sorry to reach the final page and Sharon and Mel will stay with me for a very long time.
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Author of The Nest
Every artist must come from somewhere; this is something you try to outrun, even as home fuels the creative engine. The Animators is a novel about a pair of cartoonists, but it’s also about the complexity of creative friendship, about balance and jealousy, growing into yourself and living with your talent and trying to actually, impossibly get along in this cracked and unjust world. The result is unapologetic and raucous and compulsively readable; it is potato-chip-friendly and deeply, generously wise.
Charles Bock, Author of Alice & Oliver
The Animators is a heartbreakingly beautiful, sharply funny, arrestingly unforgettable novel about love and genius, the powerful obsessiveness of artistic creation, and the equally powerful undertow of the past. Kayla Rae Whitaker writes like her head is on fire.
Kate Christensen, Pen/Faulkner Award-winning Author of The Great Man
The Animators is about trying to make art, find love and keep sane amongst the chaos of everyday life … Whitaker’s heroes have that cartoon quality of being more brightly coloured and clearly drawn than reality yet so human as to make them utterly absorbing. It hurts when they get hit and you soar when they succeed — more than anything else, you just want to spend more time with them.
Ross McIndoe, The Skinny
The Animators is a story of female friendship, but one with honesty and bite. Sharon and Mel’s creative partnership defines their relationship as much as their gender and the story is never clouded with sentimentality.
Emerald Street
There’s something exciting about The Animators … it’s the confidence of this pacey, passionate novel which really makes you feel that you might be witnessing the dawn of a brilliant career … there is insight in Whitaker’s portrayal of that endlessly complex thing, the simultaneously intense and fragile female friendship.
Jane Graham, The Big Issue
I never stopped being surprised by The Animators. Not just by the beautifully and organically engineered twists and turns of its plot, but by its sensitive tracing of the ebbs and flows of the friendship and creative partnership at its heart. Sharon and Mel – the animators of the title – are as brilliantly drawn as two of their own creations, and I felt powerfully invested in them all the way through. If A Little Life made you cry, this is the novel for you.
Simon, Foyles Bookshop
The more you read, the deeper you go; gutsy and intense; Kayla Rae Whitaker’s debut novel is exceptionally good.
Auckland Herald
The Saturday Age, Pick of the Week
The Animators crackles with intelligence; Whitaker’s remarkable ear for dialogue reads as if Aaron Sorkin wrote an episode of Girls. She expertly captures the dynamic that exists between women when they’re alone with each other, when performative parts of femininity dissolve.
Sian Cain, The Guardian
As fresh and unique as it is relatable … Charting the friendship of Sharon and Mel, who become an award-winning animation duo, it weaves in nostalgic elements while engrossing you in their thicker-than-water bond. Funny and moving, it’ll stay with you long after the book is back on the shelf.
Elle Australia, Book of the Month
Suffused with humour, tragedy, and deep insights about art and friendship, this lively novel will make you wish Mel and Sharon's films existed off the page.
Who Weekly
Female friendship has rarely been described so expertly than in this buzzy tale of two pals working on an animated film, the success of which drives a wedge between them.
Marie Claire
An engrossing, exuberant ride through all the territories of love — familial, romantic, sexual, love of friends, and, perhaps above all, white-hot passion for the art you were born to make ... I wish I’d written The Animators.
Emma Donoghue, Author of Room and the Wonder
A compulsively readable portrait of women as incandescent artists and intimate collaborators.
Elle
[An] outstanding debut … Whitaker skillfully charts the creative process, its lulls and sudden rushes of perfect inspiration. And in the relationship between Mel and Sharon, she has created something wonderful and exceptional: a rich, deep, and emotionally true connection that will certainly steal the hearts of readers.
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
An exquisite portrait of a life-defining partnership … [The Animators] creeps up on you and then swallows you whole.
Kirkus, Starred Review
A wildly original novel that pulses with heart and truth. That this powerful exploration of friendship, desire, ambition and secrets manages to be ebullient, gripping, heartbreaking, and deeply, deeply funny is a testament to Whitaker’s formidable gifts. I was so sorry to reach the final page and Sharon and Mel will stay with me for a very long time.
Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Author of The Nest
Every artist must come from somewhere; this is something you try to outrun, even as home fuels the creative engine. The Animators is a novel about a pair of cartoonists, but it’s also about the complexity of creative friendship, about balance and jealousy, growing into yourself and living with your talent and trying to actually, impossibly get along in this cracked and unjust world. The result is unapologetic and raucous and compulsively readable; it is potato-chip-friendly and deeply, generously wise.
Charles Bock, Author of Alice & Oliver
The Animators is a heartbreakingly beautiful, sharply funny, arrestingly unforgettable novel about love and genius, the powerful obsessiveness of artistic creation, and the equally powerful undertow of the past. Kayla Rae Whitaker writes like her head is on fire.
Kate Christensen, Pen/Faulkner Award-winning Author of The Great Man
The Animators is about trying to make art, find love and keep sane amongst the chaos of everyday life … Whitaker’s heroes have that cartoon quality of being more brightly coloured and clearly drawn than reality yet so human as to make them utterly absorbing. It hurts when they get hit and you soar when they succeed — more than anything else, you just want to spend more time with them.
Ross McIndoe, The Skinny
The Animators is a story of female friendship, but one with honesty and bite. Sharon and Mel’s creative partnership defines their relationship as much as their gender and the story is never clouded with sentimentality.
Emerald Street
There’s something exciting about The Animators … it’s the confidence of this pacey, passionate novel which really makes you feel that you might be witnessing the dawn of a brilliant career … there is insight in Whitaker’s portrayal of that endlessly complex thing, the simultaneously intense and fragile female friendship.
Jane Graham, The Big Issue
I never stopped being surprised by The Animators. Not just by the beautifully and organically engineered twists and turns of its plot, but by its sensitive tracing of the ebbs and flows of the friendship and creative partnership at its heart. Sharon and Mel – the animators of the title – are as brilliantly drawn as two of their own creations, and I felt powerfully invested in them all the way through. If A Little Life made you cry, this is the novel for you.
Simon, Foyles Bookshop
The more you read, the deeper you go; gutsy and intense; Kayla Rae Whitaker’s debut novel is exceptionally good.
Auckland Herald
The Unfortunate Victim by Greg Pyers
Otto Berliner is the Antipodean antecedent to Sherlock Holmes, but with more humanity.
Angela Savage, Author of The Dying Beach
Pyers has mined a rich vein of local history for this novel. His recreation of daily life in the early township is evocative, from the toils of the miners to the bountiful public houses of varying repute.
Weekend Australian
An exploration of character and the seedy underbelly of a small town. The wide cast of Daylesford locals introduced in the lead-up to the discovery of the murder is reminiscent of The Luminaries.
Books + Publishing
Angela Savage, Author of The Dying Beach
Pyers has mined a rich vein of local history for this novel. His recreation of daily life in the early township is evocative, from the toils of the miners to the bountiful public houses of varying repute.
Weekend Australian
An exploration of character and the seedy underbelly of a small town. The wide cast of Daylesford locals introduced in the lead-up to the discovery of the murder is reminiscent of The Luminaries.
Books + Publishing
Мой продуктивный мозг: Как я проверила на себе лучшие методики саморазвития и что из этого вышло by Caroline Williams, Кэролайн Уилльямс
A fascinating journey into the changes that have been discovered about the brain and mind.
The Sun
If your mind has a mind of its own, this is the book that will teach you how to discipline it and stop it wandering off. Caroline Williams has written an entertaining, smart self-help book for people who hate self-help books. Her great skill is in navigating the complexity of neuroscience to produce a practical, no-nonsense guide to brain-training that is also a page-turner.
Gaia Vince, Award-Winning Author of Adventures in the Anthropocene
A delightful book. Smart, spirited, personal, and stocked with well-researched psychological and neural facts, woven together in an original tapestry.
Marc Lewis, Award-Winning Author of The Biology of Desire
A more nuanced understanding of how our brains really work that is both empowering and insightful.
Fred Sculthorpe, The Irish Times
Presented in crisp chapters, Override is a diverting investigation into how neuroscience can nudge us towards making more efficient use of our brain’s resources.
Irish Examiner
The Sun
If your mind has a mind of its own, this is the book that will teach you how to discipline it and stop it wandering off. Caroline Williams has written an entertaining, smart self-help book for people who hate self-help books. Her great skill is in navigating the complexity of neuroscience to produce a practical, no-nonsense guide to brain-training that is also a page-turner.
Gaia Vince, Award-Winning Author of Adventures in the Anthropocene
A delightful book. Smart, spirited, personal, and stocked with well-researched psychological and neural facts, woven together in an original tapestry.
Marc Lewis, Award-Winning Author of The Biology of Desire
A more nuanced understanding of how our brains really work that is both empowering and insightful.
Fred Sculthorpe, The Irish Times
Presented in crisp chapters, Override is a diverting investigation into how neuroscience can nudge us towards making more efficient use of our brain’s resources.
Irish Examiner
Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend by Christoffer Carlsson
Of the crime novels I’ve read so far this year, Christoffer Carlsson’s new one is without a doubt the best.
Icakuriren
A multi-layered book with a complex intrigue, but above all a beautiful, well-written and plaintive book about Sweden, about betrayal, shortcomings and atonement.
Dagens Nyheter
It’s skillfully accomplished, […] Carlsson is, also this year, one of the most original and interesting Swedish authors writing in the genre.
Sydsvenskan
Carlsson has always been a confident writer and his poetic noir style is easily recognized … Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend is not a book you throw yourself over to read in one sitting, but rather a jigsaw puzzle to assemble a few pieces at a time whenever the opportunity is given … Through a dramatic denouement the already worn out Leo Junker hits a kind of bottom, hopefully to return with regained strength in the next instalment of this dark but unusually empathetic crime series.
Hallandsposten
Christoffer Carlsson has a flow to his language, it’s clear that he’s found inspiration from the masters of the genre. This forces the reader to constantly be on their toes, to be prepared for the unexpected … A style that feels forceful, authentic and alive.
Dast Magazine
Christoffer Carlsson is skillful and has no trouble portraying four parallell narratives that he weaves together in the end. The fact that he also connects the fictitious murder case in Bruket with the [real] unsolved murder of journalist Cats Falck adds an extra dimension to the third book about Leo Junker.
Skaraborgs Allehanda
Has Christoffer Carlsson lost it? Is Leo Junker’s crime solving starting to feel routine? Is the crime mystery bleak and the plot slow? A resounding no to all of these questions! He’s more interesting than ever! The complexity and depth makes it so much more than a thrilling crime mystery. The characters flourish and come alive while at the same time the prose flows and maintains a nerve in the story … A perfect read to cuddle up in the couch with on a chilly autumn day.
Litteraturmagazinet
Christoffer Carlsson’s books are permeated with great storytelling zest, and in each book his narrative technique and ability to create milieus and atmosphere is developed further … I like it a lot, and one can simply conclude that Swedish crime literature has been awarded with a new, great storyteller. When you turn the last page of Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend you can’t help but start waiting for Christoffer Carlsson to give us yet another book to be captivated by.
Johannas Deckarhörna, blog
Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend is a book entirely to my liking. On all levels. A book that was a pure pleasure to read … There’s something about Christoffer Carlsson’s way of writing that is so appealing that it lets me enjoy every word … I will definitely be on the lookout for Christoffer Carlsson’s next book. Please hurry with it!
Lottens Bokblogg, blog
Christoffer Carlsson has also made a leap forward language-wise in this new novel, and through great turns of phrase he manages to create images that stay with you … Carlsson has once again managed to write a really good crime novel, well in the same class as the first Leo Junker novel … I warmly recommend Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend.
Crimegarden, blog
Icakuriren
A multi-layered book with a complex intrigue, but above all a beautiful, well-written and plaintive book about Sweden, about betrayal, shortcomings and atonement.
Dagens Nyheter
It’s skillfully accomplished, […] Carlsson is, also this year, one of the most original and interesting Swedish authors writing in the genre.
Sydsvenskan
Carlsson has always been a confident writer and his poetic noir style is easily recognized … Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend is not a book you throw yourself over to read in one sitting, but rather a jigsaw puzzle to assemble a few pieces at a time whenever the opportunity is given … Through a dramatic denouement the already worn out Leo Junker hits a kind of bottom, hopefully to return with regained strength in the next instalment of this dark but unusually empathetic crime series.
Hallandsposten
Christoffer Carlsson has a flow to his language, it’s clear that he’s found inspiration from the masters of the genre. This forces the reader to constantly be on their toes, to be prepared for the unexpected … A style that feels forceful, authentic and alive.
Dast Magazine
Christoffer Carlsson is skillful and has no trouble portraying four parallell narratives that he weaves together in the end. The fact that he also connects the fictitious murder case in Bruket with the [real] unsolved murder of journalist Cats Falck adds an extra dimension to the third book about Leo Junker.
Skaraborgs Allehanda
Has Christoffer Carlsson lost it? Is Leo Junker’s crime solving starting to feel routine? Is the crime mystery bleak and the plot slow? A resounding no to all of these questions! He’s more interesting than ever! The complexity and depth makes it so much more than a thrilling crime mystery. The characters flourish and come alive while at the same time the prose flows and maintains a nerve in the story … A perfect read to cuddle up in the couch with on a chilly autumn day.
Litteraturmagazinet
Christoffer Carlsson’s books are permeated with great storytelling zest, and in each book his narrative technique and ability to create milieus and atmosphere is developed further … I like it a lot, and one can simply conclude that Swedish crime literature has been awarded with a new, great storyteller. When you turn the last page of Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend you can’t help but start waiting for Christoffer Carlsson to give us yet another book to be captivated by.
Johannas Deckarhörna, blog
Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend is a book entirely to my liking. On all levels. A book that was a pure pleasure to read … There’s something about Christoffer Carlsson’s way of writing that is so appealing that it lets me enjoy every word … I will definitely be on the lookout for Christoffer Carlsson’s next book. Please hurry with it!
Lottens Bokblogg, blog
Christoffer Carlsson has also made a leap forward language-wise in this new novel, and through great turns of phrase he manages to create images that stay with you … Carlsson has once again managed to write a really good crime novel, well in the same class as the first Leo Junker novel … I warmly recommend Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend.
Crimegarden, blog
Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton
Margaret the First is set in the seventeenth century, but don’t let that fool you. It’s a strikingly smart and daringly feminist novel with modern insights into love, marriage, and the siren call of ambition.
Jenny Offill, Author of Dept. of Speculation
Danielle Dutton … rejects traditional biography and historical fiction in favour of an episodic, slim novelisation of her subject’s life … The end result is an intoxicating, blazing world that celebrates a woman years ahead of her time.
Lucy Scholes, The Observer
Danielle Dutton’s slim, charming debut, Margaret the First, gives us a sympathetic account [of Margaret Cavendish’s life], largely from Cavendish’s own viewpoint … Colourful and full of flavour, with a style often as eccentric as its subject ... Dutton takes us briskly through Cavendish’s life in short scenes, free of the pastiche period language that hampers so many historical novels … Margaret the First leaves us wanting more, both of Cavendish’s life and [Dutton’s] writing.
John Self, The Times
[Margaret the First] aims to tell the story of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, the 17th-century poet, philosopher and proto-feminist ... in a series of evocative vignettes, some written in Margaret's own voice, that bring this very definitely 'unordinary' woman to vivid life.
Nick Rennison, The Sunday Times
Dutton’s vibrant prose in this novelistic imagining of Cavendish’s inner life has an air of defiance which serves her subject well. [She is] a trailblazing, self-promoting ‘femme forte’, blowing the whistle on contemporary class and gender imbalances few acknowledged and even fewer confronted.
Jane Graham, The Big Issue
This slender but dense imagining of the life of Margaret Cavendish, a pioneering 17th-century writer and wife of the aristocrat William Cavendish, could be classified as a more elliptical cousin of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell novels … Ms. Dutton’s style is tightly poetic. “It was indescribable what she wanted,” she writes of Margaret. “She wanted to be 30 people … To live as nature does, in many ages, in many brains.”
The New York Times
The duchess herself would be delighted at her resurrection in Margaret the First… Dutton expertly captures the pathos of a woman whose happiness is furrowed with the anxiety of underacknowledgment … [She] surprisingly and delightfully offers not just a remarkable duchess struggling in her duke's world but also an intriguing dissection of an unusually bountiful partnership of (almost) equals.
The New York Times Book Review
Really interesting … Margaret [Cavendish] was an intellectual powerhouse and a figure of curiosity … renowned for her eccentric style and for her unconventional behaviour … [Margaret the First is] well worth looking at.
Jane Garvey, BBC Radio 4, Woman’s Hour
Dutton’s wonderful book anoints [Margaret Cavendish] as a founding mother to the whole sphere of woman’s invention.
Sarah Ditum, New Statesman
Danielle Dutton’s wonderfully strange new novel is a portrait of Margaret of Newcastle, whose perceived excesses and eccentricities were an object of fascination for her time, as well as for Virginia Woolf, who laments in A Room of One's Own, “What a vision of loneliness and riot the thought of Margaret Cavendish brings to mind!” And what a visionary portrait Margaret the First is, not only for the sheer joy of the sentences, but also as it’s a marvel of tenderness, rewriting a historical caricature as a life, delighting in Margaret's passion for writing and love of the beautiful and strange from childhood on. I am in awe of what Dutton accomplishes here, in this novel of the small and the sublime. What a triumph!
Kate Zambreno, Author of Green Girl
“All this trouble for a girl,” say the bears in the book Margaret Cavendish writes … Margaret the First is the story of a very real woman at a very particular moment in history, that is at the same time the story of every woman artist who has ever burst loose the constraints of her particular moment in history to create “a new world called the blazing world.”
Kathryn Davis, Author of The Thin Place and Duplex
Danielle Dutton’s bright little dagger of a book cuts quick and sharp, and tells the true tale of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle … in Dutton’s first- (and third-) person telling of the life of ‘Mad Madge’ we encounter an ambitious, highly individual mind exploring the boundaries of its own perceptions, and, in so doing, achieving an unlikely notoriety.
Jonny Diamond, Literary Hub, Best Books of 2016
Dutton’s remarkable second novel is as vividly imaginative as its subject, the 17th-century English writer and eccentric Margaret Cavendish … Reminiscent of Woolf’s Orlando in its sensuous appreciation of the world and unconventional approach to fictionalized biography. Dutton’s boldness, striking prose, and skill at developing an idiosyncratic narrative should introduce her to the wider audience she deserves.
Publisher’s Weekly
A slim, poetic meditation on the writing life as seen through the experiences of Margaret Cavendish … Virginia Woolf hovers over this brief novel, audible in its cadences and visible in its cascading images of nature, artistry, and oddity … Despite its period setting and details, this novel — more poem than biography — feels rooted in the experiences of contemporary women with artistic and intellectual ambitions. Margaret’s alternating bursts of inspiration and despair about her work may feel achingly familiar to Dutton’s likely readers, many of whom will probably also be aspiring writers.
Kirkus
“I had rather be a meteor, singly, alone,” writes Margaret Cavendish, the titular character in Dutton’s novel Margaret the First. Cavendish is “a shy but audacious” woman of letters, whose writing and ambitions were ahead of her time. The taut prose and supple backdrop of courtly life are irresistible. (Witness: quail in broth and oysters; bowls stuffed with winter roses, petals tissue-thin; strange instruments set beside snuffboxes.) Dutton is something of a meteor herself, as founder of the Dorothy Project and with two wondrous books already under her belt, including the Believer Book Award-nominated novel Sprawl.
The Millions, Most Anticipated: The Great 2016 Book Preview
In Margaret the First, a remarkable novel that re-tells Margaret Cavendish's life, Danielle Dutton has pulled off the extraordinary feat of bringing to life that wildness, that generosity, and that passion for knowledge and understanding that so impressed Woolf, as well as redressing the silencing with which Margaret’s life and achievements have been met, and which Woolf mourns.
Sian Norris, 3AM Magazine
Margaret Cavendish (1623–73) did something that was vanishingly rare for women in 17th-century England: She became a famous writer … This is the story Danielle Dutton tells in her beguiling biographical novel Margaret the First… William, a poet and patron of the arts, encourages his wife’s ambitions even as they bring notoriety upon the household ... Ms. Dutton sensitively shows how Margaret’s iconoclasm complicates, but ultimately enriches their relationship. “A woman cannot strive to make known her wit without losing her reputation,” Margaret laments when told of the scandal her writing provokes. Yet this inimitable woman made her reputation anyway, and Ms. Dutton’s novel charmingly enhances it.
The Wall Street Journal
Although Margaret the First is set in 17th century London, it’s not a traditional work of historical fiction. It is an experimental novel that, like the works of Jeanette Winterson, draws on language and style to tell the story … There is a restless ambition to [Danielle Dutton’s] intellect.
The Los Angeles Times
Beautiful, accessible, and hypnotic.
Bustle
Danielle Dutton engagingly embellishes the life of Margaret the First, the infamous Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Vanity Fair
A fabulous (and fabulist) re-imagining of the infamous Margaret Cavendish … Margaret the First isn’t a historical novel, however; magnificently weird and linguistically dazzling, it’s a book as much about how difficult and rewarding it is for an ambitious, independent, and gifted woman to build a life as an artist in any era as it is about Margaret herself. Incredibly smart, innovative, and refreshing, Margaret the First will resonate with anyone who’s struggled with forging her own path in the world.
Book Riot
A perfect dagger of a book: sharp, dark sentences, in and out quick.
Literary Hub
Dutton, an accomplished writer and daring publisher, here upends the genre of the historical novel in a brilliant book about Margaret Cavendish, a mold-breaking British Duchess of the 17th century who wrote poetry, drama, philosophy, and even science fiction.
Flavorwire
Dutton’s profile constructs [Margaret] as a fully formed, complicated human being, as a woman whose interests and inclinations stem from a complex personal history. It’s this profile that’s the star of the novel as much as its subject, since it deftly weaves together primary and secondary sources to form a wholly integrated, believable and gripping account of a woman who didn’t belong to the times in which she was born, not least because these times were too volatile for her to ever plant herself in them.
Electric Literature
With refreshing and idiosyncratic style, Dutton portrays the inner turmoil and eccentric genius of an intellectual far ahead of her time.
Jane Ciabattari, bbc.com
This vivid novel is a dramatization of the life of 17th century Duchess Margaret Cavendish, who wrote and published fantastical fiction and feminist plays well before it was acceptable for women to do so ... While the novel takes place in the 1600s, the explorations of marriage, ambition, and feminist ideals are timeless.
The Boston Globe
Dutton has captured the tumultuous life in a novel that is as radically inventive as its subject. Like [Margaret’s] plays, it eschews traditional structure, but instead naturally flits through her life, from scene to scene, place to place. Some events are consigned to a few sentences, while others are explored in detail, such as Margaret’s arrest at gunpoint, along with her Royalist family’s, by Parliamentarian forces near the start of the Civil War. The result is a short, 177-page novel that is a sharply focused, intimate portrait of a remarkable woman who lived in a tumultuous time.
Maclean’s
A literary page-turner, which explores Cavendish’s adventurous life, weaving historical details into a spool of crafted, poetic prose … Three hundred and forty-three years after Margaret Cavendish’s death, the Duchess speaks.
The Literary Review
A brilliantly odd and absorbing historical novel … Bold, tender, funny and strange.
Belinda McKeon, Author of Tender
Margaret the First is an exquisite piece of writing. It plunges the reader immediately into a world overflowing with interest, beauty, and sorrow. Peppered with Cavendish’s own extraordinary writings, as well as phrases echoing down from Virginia Woolf, Dutton’s writing is language at its most precise and evocative, and fictional biography at its most imaginative and deft. This book is the gorgeous work of a very fine mind.
Katherine Angel, Author of Unmastered
Historical fiction like you’ve never read it before! Dutton captures the ferocious intelligence of a woman far ahead of her time and breathes fresh spirit into her life story. Gorgeously written and bursting with the poetry and splendour of a world just discovering itself, this is a remarkable book about a remarkable woman.
Marion Rankine, Foyles Bookshop
Dutton’s style is as remarkable as her subject; this curious, beautiful novel is sensitive interrogation of the conflicting attractions of celebrity, femininity, marriage and ambition.
Francesca Wade, The Sunday Telegraph
Remarkable … a unique portrait of a gifted woman.
Mindfood
From writer and publisher Danielle Dutton comes a novel about eccentric 17th-century duchess Margaret Cavendish, who penned poems, feminist plays and utopian science-fiction in a time when, at least for women, that decidedly wasn't a thing. Early reviews refer to Margaret the First not so much as ‘historical fiction’ but as a modern story set in the past.
Laura, The Chicago Tribune
Margaret the First has such incredible sentences, and a sense of history that feels like intimacy.
Sara Jaffe, Author of Dryland
Dutton's profile constructs [Margaret] as a fully formed, complicated human being, as a woman whose interests and inclinations stem from a complex personal history. It’s this profile that's the star of the novel as much as its subject, since it deftly weaves together primary and secondary sources to form a wholly integrated, believable and gripping account of a woman who didn’t belong to the times in which she was born, not least because these times were too volatile for her to ever plant herself in them.
Simon Chandler, Electric Literature
Margaret the First is a work of extraordinary emotional and psychological complexity, about a woman who locates salvation in her own creativity and is audacious enough to seek recognition in a world governed by men, from which it is not readily forthcoming. It is also a novel which plays with the line between confidence and egoism in a setting in which the slightest display of confidence on a woman's part is too easily glossed as egoism … Its energy is inimitable; its curious aura — its curious beauty — burns a long while.
Natalie Helberg, Numero Cinq
With this novel about the 17th-century intellectual Margaret Cavendish, Dutton joins Alexander Chee in the camp of writers who are looking to history for vibrant settings and new ways to explore their themes of choice.
Tobias Carroll, Vol.1. Brooklyn
In Margaret the First, the Duchess of Newcastle's internal life is depicted, like Cavendish's own writing, in fits of lushness and “fancies.” Dutton has an impeccable way of tempering these by writing her as a unique, flawed person, rather than simplistically upholding her as a feminist hero or perpetuating the narrative that she was ‘mad.’
Flavorwire
Dutton refreshes Cavendish's words for a contemporary audience, rendering them relevant and powerful once more.
The Portland Mercury
Each sentence in Margaret the First is like sea glass, exquisite and unyielding. The sentences stand out for their crafting, not overly ornate or precious, but determined, assured … While reading Margaret the First, I get the sense of looking at paintings, of stillness animated while turning pages. The immersion becomes almost meditative, like sitting before a Mark Rothko painting and melting into its colors.
The Millions
One imagines that Madge would be thrilled to find herself at the center of a new novel by the American author Danielle Dutton … Dutton has followed her critically acclaimed debut, Sprawl, with a vibrant rendition of a unique historical figure … Humour is typical of Margaret’s voice, which Dutton relates in first person until a shift midway switches to third, cleverly underlining the duchess’s desire to move from a private space to a public stage. The snippet-like diary form and rate of whip-smart quips bring to mind such contemporary American authors as Jenny Offill and Nell Zink … Margaret’s extraordinary character and curious mind shine throughout her story … In her short novel Dutton finds the words to give Margaret the voice she felt she lacked. “I had rather appear worse in singularity than better in the mode,” announces the duchess. That individuality emerges in an intimate, impressive portrait of a woman centuries ahead of her time.
Sarah Gilmartin, The Irish Times
Danielle Dutton's novel, Margaret the First, published by Catapult, is a literary page-turner, which explores Cavendish's adventurous life, weaving historical details into a spool of crafted, poetic prose.
Gretchen McCullough, The Literary Review
Dutton's fictionalized biography is unconventional in its approach, but entirely sensuous and captivating in its style — much like her subject.
Historical Novels Review
Margaret Cavendish, the 17th-century poet, philosopher, godmother of science fiction, and one of the first tabloid celebrities, is the subject of Danielle Dutton's delicate, lovely new historical novel Margaret the First.
Constance Grady, Vox
Scintillating … Dutton’s prose is lambent and evocative, like Woolf’s, and her narrative drifts, but it is attached to life through moments of intense specifity made possible by Dutton’s research.
Rohan Maitzen, TLS
I loved Margaret the First… The prose is luminous and odd, the heroine eccentric and unforgettable.
Nuala O’Connor, The Irish Times
‘This short literary book offers big rewards to readers interested in the complex mind of a woman ahead of her time.
Sarah Cohn, Library Journal
Margaret Cavendish is the fascinating subject of Danielle Dutton’s hypnotic new novel, Margaret the First… With just a few precise brushstrokes, Dutton paints a gorgeous, richly detailed world that lingers long after the novel ends; this sublime writing and imagery are the book’s great strengths.
Caitlin Callaghan, The Rumpus
In Margaret the First, there is plenty of room for play. Dutton’s work serves to emphasize the ambiguities of archival proof, restoring historical narratives to what they have perhaps always already been: provoking and serious fantasies, convincing reconstructions, true fictions.
Lucy Ives, The New Yorker
A masterful achievement in historical fiction.
Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Guardian
Jenny Offill, Author of Dept. of Speculation
Danielle Dutton … rejects traditional biography and historical fiction in favour of an episodic, slim novelisation of her subject’s life … The end result is an intoxicating, blazing world that celebrates a woman years ahead of her time.
Lucy Scholes, The Observer
Danielle Dutton’s slim, charming debut, Margaret the First, gives us a sympathetic account [of Margaret Cavendish’s life], largely from Cavendish’s own viewpoint … Colourful and full of flavour, with a style often as eccentric as its subject ... Dutton takes us briskly through Cavendish’s life in short scenes, free of the pastiche period language that hampers so many historical novels … Margaret the First leaves us wanting more, both of Cavendish’s life and [Dutton’s] writing.
John Self, The Times
[Margaret the First] aims to tell the story of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, the 17th-century poet, philosopher and proto-feminist ... in a series of evocative vignettes, some written in Margaret's own voice, that bring this very definitely 'unordinary' woman to vivid life.
Nick Rennison, The Sunday Times
Dutton’s vibrant prose in this novelistic imagining of Cavendish’s inner life has an air of defiance which serves her subject well. [She is] a trailblazing, self-promoting ‘femme forte’, blowing the whistle on contemporary class and gender imbalances few acknowledged and even fewer confronted.
Jane Graham, The Big Issue
This slender but dense imagining of the life of Margaret Cavendish, a pioneering 17th-century writer and wife of the aristocrat William Cavendish, could be classified as a more elliptical cousin of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell novels … Ms. Dutton’s style is tightly poetic. “It was indescribable what she wanted,” she writes of Margaret. “She wanted to be 30 people … To live as nature does, in many ages, in many brains.”
The New York Times
The duchess herself would be delighted at her resurrection in Margaret the First… Dutton expertly captures the pathos of a woman whose happiness is furrowed with the anxiety of underacknowledgment … [She] surprisingly and delightfully offers not just a remarkable duchess struggling in her duke's world but also an intriguing dissection of an unusually bountiful partnership of (almost) equals.
The New York Times Book Review
Really interesting … Margaret [Cavendish] was an intellectual powerhouse and a figure of curiosity … renowned for her eccentric style and for her unconventional behaviour … [Margaret the First is] well worth looking at.
Jane Garvey, BBC Radio 4, Woman’s Hour
Dutton’s wonderful book anoints [Margaret Cavendish] as a founding mother to the whole sphere of woman’s invention.
Sarah Ditum, New Statesman
Danielle Dutton’s wonderfully strange new novel is a portrait of Margaret of Newcastle, whose perceived excesses and eccentricities were an object of fascination for her time, as well as for Virginia Woolf, who laments in A Room of One's Own, “What a vision of loneliness and riot the thought of Margaret Cavendish brings to mind!” And what a visionary portrait Margaret the First is, not only for the sheer joy of the sentences, but also as it’s a marvel of tenderness, rewriting a historical caricature as a life, delighting in Margaret's passion for writing and love of the beautiful and strange from childhood on. I am in awe of what Dutton accomplishes here, in this novel of the small and the sublime. What a triumph!
Kate Zambreno, Author of Green Girl
“All this trouble for a girl,” say the bears in the book Margaret Cavendish writes … Margaret the First is the story of a very real woman at a very particular moment in history, that is at the same time the story of every woman artist who has ever burst loose the constraints of her particular moment in history to create “a new world called the blazing world.”
Kathryn Davis, Author of The Thin Place and Duplex
Danielle Dutton’s bright little dagger of a book cuts quick and sharp, and tells the true tale of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle … in Dutton’s first- (and third-) person telling of the life of ‘Mad Madge’ we encounter an ambitious, highly individual mind exploring the boundaries of its own perceptions, and, in so doing, achieving an unlikely notoriety.
Jonny Diamond, Literary Hub, Best Books of 2016
Dutton’s remarkable second novel is as vividly imaginative as its subject, the 17th-century English writer and eccentric Margaret Cavendish … Reminiscent of Woolf’s Orlando in its sensuous appreciation of the world and unconventional approach to fictionalized biography. Dutton’s boldness, striking prose, and skill at developing an idiosyncratic narrative should introduce her to the wider audience she deserves.
Publisher’s Weekly
A slim, poetic meditation on the writing life as seen through the experiences of Margaret Cavendish … Virginia Woolf hovers over this brief novel, audible in its cadences and visible in its cascading images of nature, artistry, and oddity … Despite its period setting and details, this novel — more poem than biography — feels rooted in the experiences of contemporary women with artistic and intellectual ambitions. Margaret’s alternating bursts of inspiration and despair about her work may feel achingly familiar to Dutton’s likely readers, many of whom will probably also be aspiring writers.
Kirkus
“I had rather be a meteor, singly, alone,” writes Margaret Cavendish, the titular character in Dutton’s novel Margaret the First. Cavendish is “a shy but audacious” woman of letters, whose writing and ambitions were ahead of her time. The taut prose and supple backdrop of courtly life are irresistible. (Witness: quail in broth and oysters; bowls stuffed with winter roses, petals tissue-thin; strange instruments set beside snuffboxes.) Dutton is something of a meteor herself, as founder of the Dorothy Project and with two wondrous books already under her belt, including the Believer Book Award-nominated novel Sprawl.
The Millions, Most Anticipated: The Great 2016 Book Preview
In Margaret the First, a remarkable novel that re-tells Margaret Cavendish's life, Danielle Dutton has pulled off the extraordinary feat of bringing to life that wildness, that generosity, and that passion for knowledge and understanding that so impressed Woolf, as well as redressing the silencing with which Margaret’s life and achievements have been met, and which Woolf mourns.
Sian Norris, 3AM Magazine
Margaret Cavendish (1623–73) did something that was vanishingly rare for women in 17th-century England: She became a famous writer … This is the story Danielle Dutton tells in her beguiling biographical novel Margaret the First… William, a poet and patron of the arts, encourages his wife’s ambitions even as they bring notoriety upon the household ... Ms. Dutton sensitively shows how Margaret’s iconoclasm complicates, but ultimately enriches their relationship. “A woman cannot strive to make known her wit without losing her reputation,” Margaret laments when told of the scandal her writing provokes. Yet this inimitable woman made her reputation anyway, and Ms. Dutton’s novel charmingly enhances it.
The Wall Street Journal
Although Margaret the First is set in 17th century London, it’s not a traditional work of historical fiction. It is an experimental novel that, like the works of Jeanette Winterson, draws on language and style to tell the story … There is a restless ambition to [Danielle Dutton’s] intellect.
The Los Angeles Times
Beautiful, accessible, and hypnotic.
Bustle
Danielle Dutton engagingly embellishes the life of Margaret the First, the infamous Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Vanity Fair
A fabulous (and fabulist) re-imagining of the infamous Margaret Cavendish … Margaret the First isn’t a historical novel, however; magnificently weird and linguistically dazzling, it’s a book as much about how difficult and rewarding it is for an ambitious, independent, and gifted woman to build a life as an artist in any era as it is about Margaret herself. Incredibly smart, innovative, and refreshing, Margaret the First will resonate with anyone who’s struggled with forging her own path in the world.
Book Riot
A perfect dagger of a book: sharp, dark sentences, in and out quick.
Literary Hub
Dutton, an accomplished writer and daring publisher, here upends the genre of the historical novel in a brilliant book about Margaret Cavendish, a mold-breaking British Duchess of the 17th century who wrote poetry, drama, philosophy, and even science fiction.
Flavorwire
Dutton’s profile constructs [Margaret] as a fully formed, complicated human being, as a woman whose interests and inclinations stem from a complex personal history. It’s this profile that’s the star of the novel as much as its subject, since it deftly weaves together primary and secondary sources to form a wholly integrated, believable and gripping account of a woman who didn’t belong to the times in which she was born, not least because these times were too volatile for her to ever plant herself in them.
Electric Literature
With refreshing and idiosyncratic style, Dutton portrays the inner turmoil and eccentric genius of an intellectual far ahead of her time.
Jane Ciabattari, bbc.com
This vivid novel is a dramatization of the life of 17th century Duchess Margaret Cavendish, who wrote and published fantastical fiction and feminist plays well before it was acceptable for women to do so ... While the novel takes place in the 1600s, the explorations of marriage, ambition, and feminist ideals are timeless.
The Boston Globe
Dutton has captured the tumultuous life in a novel that is as radically inventive as its subject. Like [Margaret’s] plays, it eschews traditional structure, but instead naturally flits through her life, from scene to scene, place to place. Some events are consigned to a few sentences, while others are explored in detail, such as Margaret’s arrest at gunpoint, along with her Royalist family’s, by Parliamentarian forces near the start of the Civil War. The result is a short, 177-page novel that is a sharply focused, intimate portrait of a remarkable woman who lived in a tumultuous time.
Maclean’s
A literary page-turner, which explores Cavendish’s adventurous life, weaving historical details into a spool of crafted, poetic prose … Three hundred and forty-three years after Margaret Cavendish’s death, the Duchess speaks.
The Literary Review
A brilliantly odd and absorbing historical novel … Bold, tender, funny and strange.
Belinda McKeon, Author of Tender
Margaret the First is an exquisite piece of writing. It plunges the reader immediately into a world overflowing with interest, beauty, and sorrow. Peppered with Cavendish’s own extraordinary writings, as well as phrases echoing down from Virginia Woolf, Dutton’s writing is language at its most precise and evocative, and fictional biography at its most imaginative and deft. This book is the gorgeous work of a very fine mind.
Katherine Angel, Author of Unmastered
Historical fiction like you’ve never read it before! Dutton captures the ferocious intelligence of a woman far ahead of her time and breathes fresh spirit into her life story. Gorgeously written and bursting with the poetry and splendour of a world just discovering itself, this is a remarkable book about a remarkable woman.
Marion Rankine, Foyles Bookshop
Dutton’s style is as remarkable as her subject; this curious, beautiful novel is sensitive interrogation of the conflicting attractions of celebrity, femininity, marriage and ambition.
Francesca Wade, The Sunday Telegraph
Remarkable … a unique portrait of a gifted woman.
Mindfood
From writer and publisher Danielle Dutton comes a novel about eccentric 17th-century duchess Margaret Cavendish, who penned poems, feminist plays and utopian science-fiction in a time when, at least for women, that decidedly wasn't a thing. Early reviews refer to Margaret the First not so much as ‘historical fiction’ but as a modern story set in the past.
Laura, The Chicago Tribune
Margaret the First has such incredible sentences, and a sense of history that feels like intimacy.
Sara Jaffe, Author of Dryland
Dutton's profile constructs [Margaret] as a fully formed, complicated human being, as a woman whose interests and inclinations stem from a complex personal history. It’s this profile that's the star of the novel as much as its subject, since it deftly weaves together primary and secondary sources to form a wholly integrated, believable and gripping account of a woman who didn’t belong to the times in which she was born, not least because these times were too volatile for her to ever plant herself in them.
Simon Chandler, Electric Literature
Margaret the First is a work of extraordinary emotional and psychological complexity, about a woman who locates salvation in her own creativity and is audacious enough to seek recognition in a world governed by men, from which it is not readily forthcoming. It is also a novel which plays with the line between confidence and egoism in a setting in which the slightest display of confidence on a woman's part is too easily glossed as egoism … Its energy is inimitable; its curious aura — its curious beauty — burns a long while.
Natalie Helberg, Numero Cinq
With this novel about the 17th-century intellectual Margaret Cavendish, Dutton joins Alexander Chee in the camp of writers who are looking to history for vibrant settings and new ways to explore their themes of choice.
Tobias Carroll, Vol.1. Brooklyn
In Margaret the First, the Duchess of Newcastle's internal life is depicted, like Cavendish's own writing, in fits of lushness and “fancies.” Dutton has an impeccable way of tempering these by writing her as a unique, flawed person, rather than simplistically upholding her as a feminist hero or perpetuating the narrative that she was ‘mad.’
Flavorwire
Dutton refreshes Cavendish's words for a contemporary audience, rendering them relevant and powerful once more.
The Portland Mercury
Each sentence in Margaret the First is like sea glass, exquisite and unyielding. The sentences stand out for their crafting, not overly ornate or precious, but determined, assured … While reading Margaret the First, I get the sense of looking at paintings, of stillness animated while turning pages. The immersion becomes almost meditative, like sitting before a Mark Rothko painting and melting into its colors.
The Millions
One imagines that Madge would be thrilled to find herself at the center of a new novel by the American author Danielle Dutton … Dutton has followed her critically acclaimed debut, Sprawl, with a vibrant rendition of a unique historical figure … Humour is typical of Margaret’s voice, which Dutton relates in first person until a shift midway switches to third, cleverly underlining the duchess’s desire to move from a private space to a public stage. The snippet-like diary form and rate of whip-smart quips bring to mind such contemporary American authors as Jenny Offill and Nell Zink … Margaret’s extraordinary character and curious mind shine throughout her story … In her short novel Dutton finds the words to give Margaret the voice she felt she lacked. “I had rather appear worse in singularity than better in the mode,” announces the duchess. That individuality emerges in an intimate, impressive portrait of a woman centuries ahead of her time.
Sarah Gilmartin, The Irish Times
Danielle Dutton's novel, Margaret the First, published by Catapult, is a literary page-turner, which explores Cavendish's adventurous life, weaving historical details into a spool of crafted, poetic prose.
Gretchen McCullough, The Literary Review
Dutton's fictionalized biography is unconventional in its approach, but entirely sensuous and captivating in its style — much like her subject.
Historical Novels Review
Margaret Cavendish, the 17th-century poet, philosopher, godmother of science fiction, and one of the first tabloid celebrities, is the subject of Danielle Dutton's delicate, lovely new historical novel Margaret the First.
Constance Grady, Vox
Scintillating … Dutton’s prose is lambent and evocative, like Woolf’s, and her narrative drifts, but it is attached to life through moments of intense specifity made possible by Dutton’s research.
Rohan Maitzen, TLS
I loved Margaret the First… The prose is luminous and odd, the heroine eccentric and unforgettable.
Nuala O’Connor, The Irish Times
‘This short literary book offers big rewards to readers interested in the complex mind of a woman ahead of her time.
Sarah Cohn, Library Journal
Margaret Cavendish is the fascinating subject of Danielle Dutton’s hypnotic new novel, Margaret the First… With just a few precise brushstrokes, Dutton paints a gorgeous, richly detailed world that lingers long after the novel ends; this sublime writing and imagery are the book’s great strengths.
Caitlin Callaghan, The Rumpus
In Margaret the First, there is plenty of room for play. Dutton’s work serves to emphasize the ambiguities of archival proof, restoring historical narratives to what they have perhaps always already been: provoking and serious fantasies, convincing reconstructions, true fictions.
Lucy Ives, The New Yorker
A masterful achievement in historical fiction.
Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Guardian
Walking in Berlin: a flaneur in the capital by Franz Hessel
Hessel is a feisty, clever, and witty guide to Berlin; his prose is animated and sumptuous and his perceptions glamorously lyrical. For anyone who knows the geography of Berlin, this book is an especial treat.
Gail Jones, Saturday Age
Beautiful … a classic observation of the German city in the late 1920s that illuminates many of the historic shadows and provides a wonderful map for modern-day wanderings.
Sydney Morning Herald
[A]n absolutely epic book, a walking remembrance.
Walter Benjamin
Walking in Berlin is a magical mystery tour of a city on the brink of upheaval. Hessel may have wandered haphazardly but he wrote with purpose, never once losing his way.
Malcolm Forbes, Sunday Herald
Walking in Berlin can be read lightly as a postcard from the past; it should be read seriously as an inexhaustible record of all that Berlin was and might have been, as an enthralling guide to a wealth of references, sidetracks, lost paths … This is a first encounter with the myth and the reality of that intangible fantastic beast of a city.
Mika Provata-Carlone, Bookanista
Captures a portrait of a city on the brink of irrevocable change … Hessel was both detailed chronicler of the present, and a man keenly aware of the city’s history … Apt then that Walking in Berlin now joins this historical hall of fame.
Lucy Scholes, The Independent
Hessel’s conversational style and subtle insights evoke Weimar Berlin and reveal a great deal about the Germany of his days.
Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times
[Walking in Berlin] is not only an important record of old Berlin; it is a testimony to its enduring spirit.
Harry Strawson, TLS
Hessel is a modest master of spontaneous observation.
Sabine Vogel, Berliner Zeitung
…a newly rediscovered treasure.
Die Welt
To this day, there is no better Berlin travel guide.
Peter Von Becker, Tagesspiegel
When you think of Berlin in the 1920s, you cannot avoid thinking of the storyteller, critic and translator Franz Hessel.
Manfred Papst Recommends Spazieren in Berlin in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)
Like a private invitation back to the city’s most beguiling era … Irreverent and yet always enthusiastic, [Hessel’s] 88-year-old love letter to this city is a true map of the traces of a bygone world.
Vanessa Thorpe, The Observer Magazine
Hessel’s warm enthusiasm for his home town informs every page, and provides the reader with a geographical guide that still holds value, despite the enormous changes in the city. More than that, though, it evokes a time that, although just about within living memory, seems almost as remote as the nineteenth-century Berlin of Schinkel.
Shiny New Books
[A] sprawling panorama of cultural memory and miscellany, a vibrant catalog of metropolitan life, and a seismograph of a city on the verge of disaster.
Los Angeles Review of Books
Hessel’s wonderings in the Weimar-era German capital mix social commentary with artistic and architectural analysis … his musings offer a fresh set of eyes.
GQ
A timely ode to a good meander and [Hessel’s] home city [Berlin].
Wanderlust
Gail Jones, Saturday Age
Beautiful … a classic observation of the German city in the late 1920s that illuminates many of the historic shadows and provides a wonderful map for modern-day wanderings.
Sydney Morning Herald
[A]n absolutely epic book, a walking remembrance.
Walter Benjamin
Walking in Berlin is a magical mystery tour of a city on the brink of upheaval. Hessel may have wandered haphazardly but he wrote with purpose, never once losing his way.
Malcolm Forbes, Sunday Herald
Walking in Berlin can be read lightly as a postcard from the past; it should be read seriously as an inexhaustible record of all that Berlin was and might have been, as an enthralling guide to a wealth of references, sidetracks, lost paths … This is a first encounter with the myth and the reality of that intangible fantastic beast of a city.
Mika Provata-Carlone, Bookanista
Captures a portrait of a city on the brink of irrevocable change … Hessel was both detailed chronicler of the present, and a man keenly aware of the city’s history … Apt then that Walking in Berlin now joins this historical hall of fame.
Lucy Scholes, The Independent
Hessel’s conversational style and subtle insights evoke Weimar Berlin and reveal a great deal about the Germany of his days.
Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times
[Walking in Berlin] is not only an important record of old Berlin; it is a testimony to its enduring spirit.
Harry Strawson, TLS
Hessel is a modest master of spontaneous observation.
Sabine Vogel, Berliner Zeitung
…a newly rediscovered treasure.
Die Welt
To this day, there is no better Berlin travel guide.
Peter Von Becker, Tagesspiegel
When you think of Berlin in the 1920s, you cannot avoid thinking of the storyteller, critic and translator Franz Hessel.
Manfred Papst Recommends Spazieren in Berlin in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)
Like a private invitation back to the city’s most beguiling era … Irreverent and yet always enthusiastic, [Hessel’s] 88-year-old love letter to this city is a true map of the traces of a bygone world.
Vanessa Thorpe, The Observer Magazine
Hessel’s warm enthusiasm for his home town informs every page, and provides the reader with a geographical guide that still holds value, despite the enormous changes in the city. More than that, though, it evokes a time that, although just about within living memory, seems almost as remote as the nineteenth-century Berlin of Schinkel.
Shiny New Books
[A] sprawling panorama of cultural memory and miscellany, a vibrant catalog of metropolitan life, and a seismograph of a city on the verge of disaster.
Los Angeles Review of Books
Hessel’s wonderings in the Weimar-era German capital mix social commentary with artistic and architectural analysis … his musings offer a fresh set of eyes.
GQ
A timely ode to a good meander and [Hessel’s] home city [Berlin].
Wanderlust