PositiveIrish Times (IRE)Elkin weaves across the decades, writing into a current culture of rowbacks (Roe-backs?) in women’s lives ... To investigate gendered expectations of women as artists, she draws not just on visual makers, but writers and thinkers from Virginia Woolf (frequently circling back to Professions for Women) and Julia Kristeva’s linking of shame and abjection.
Laura Cumming
RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)\"Alongside the story of Fabritius and Cumming’s father, Thunderclap offers a fascinating insight into Dutch painting and broader Netherlandish society through its paintings, from housing to infrastructure, poverty and family life ... There is a connective line between Thunderclap and John Berger’s Ways of Seeing in imploring us to look, and look again. Cumming urges the reader to reconsider paintings they admired, no matter how familiar, to find something new, often spurred to this by events in her own life ... Cumming [has] created an investigative, thought-provoking space, reminding us that looking at a great work of art can begin a lifelong thunderclap of obsession.\
Kate Zambreno
RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)A book about nothing is often a book about everything, and this text– whatever it may be - is concerned with the act of writing and living, of time and stasis ... Structurally the book is a tornado, a whirling, kinetic funnel carrying art, philosophers, dogs, paintings and trains within it ... In a book as elliptical as this one, there are two certainties which the narrator can’t escape from: the submission of her book, and the due date of her unexpected pregnancy. The latter takes up the final part, in a series of stunning and urgent vignettes, which themselves twist time, altering the pace and rhythm of the book ... Zambreno’s previous work, from Heroines to Book of Mutter, has always been interested in embodiment, gender and who gets to make a creative life. With each book, she becomes more expansive, sharper in her insight, each time picking something new off the bones of familiar subjects ... with all its accumulations, this feels like a book that should be read now. It has its own kind of geographic quarantine – pacing the rooms at home, the mundanity of daily routines and commitments – that in small increments amounts to a tender and contemplative account of artistic paralysis ... presents a new possibility for the novel. There is nothing that can’t be included, and even the most ordinary of objects or encounters build towards a greater understanding of existence ... a risky, reflective work that refuses to conform – to time or traditional narrative. It is difficult to make a book about the quotidian – not every reader will equate its dives into the minutiae as insight - but in these current uncertain times it offers illumination and solidarity.
Leslie Jamison
RaveThe Irish Times (UK)The organization of the collection — the three sections, the order of the essays, the way each essay subtly or overtly connects to others — contributes to a satisfying unity that feels organic, no matter how fully intended ... [Jamison\'s] empathy is not something she puts on in order to wheedle her way into people’s confidence, and it is precisely the insights that she brings from her own experience that make her writing so thoroughly humane. Certainly, it is what draws me to her work ... This essay collection neither screams nor burns. I’ve already read it twice, and I know that I will read it again when I need an infusion of that signature Jamison observant, open-minded, empathetic humanity ... Jamison interleaves her own narrative with others, recounting milestone life events while amplifying voices that aren’t loud enough (and in one case, a whale). Perhaps all writing is an innate, primal scream, and Jamison – astutely – knows and embodies this with compassion and vigour.
VIV Albertine
RaveThe Irish TimesThe book dispensed with groupie cliches and gossipy reveals in favour of something more impactful and moving. In recounting the early days of punk in London, Albertine created a work of social geography and cultural class consciousness ... Her ferocity and insight were carried along by her ease with words.
Jenny Offill
RaveThe Irish Times... brilliant, risk-taking ... The themes may seem familiar – the story of a marriage, the quest for identity – but Offill tells it with mesmerising skill ... staccato sections are infinitely quotable, and each paragraph break demands that the reader stop to absorb what’s being said ... Given the weight of her subjects, Offill manages to instil her fragmented observations with humour, even if it’s of the darkest variety. There are countless one-liners ... Offill has a gift for distillation and for saying something extraordinary in a handful of words. The slight size of this book belies the depth of exploration and ideas at work. Dept of Speculation is astute and affecting on the politics of relationships and the burdens of day-to-day living; of children, work and the feeling that life is passing us by. Offill has created a masterpiece that is philosophical, funny and moving. This is a book that’s not easily forgotten. Let’s hope it’s not another 15 years before her next.
Sarah Moss
RaveThe Irish Times\"Moss expertly captures the hinterland of being an older teen who is not yet an adult, splicing Silvie’s encounters with shame, curiosity, desire and fear ... There is a spring-taut tension embedded in the pages, which is built up slowly by a number of means. Moss dispenses not just with speech indicators, but runs all the dialogue into regular sentences. It’s both breathless and indistinguishable from the other text ... The novel gradually narrows its focus, and the ending becomes a bottleneck from which character and reader feel they can’t escape ... Moss’s brevity is admirable, her language pristine. This story lingers, leaving its own ghosts, but with important lessons for the future of idealising the past.\
Rose George
PositiveThe Irish Times\"The book is full of striking facts and disturbing stories ... What’s notable about George’s work – and, in particular, this book – is her approach to the subject and how deftly she communicates vast tracts of information. George has clearly undertaken a huge volume of research and travel, but it’s presented engagingly, often sardonically. The reader rarely feels bombarded with academic science or medicalese, unlike many books in this area which scare off readers. Nine Pints is a hugely intelligent, humane and riveting work, and from illness to industry, George is an engaging guide through the bloodstream.\
