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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

GA is very, very good, but he is terrifyingly real. He drifts from put upon to aggression to petty to defiant with such ease it is mesmerising to watch.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I loved it, but thought Billy Crudup stole the show.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Ben, if that is case, please do not board a plane!

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Is this the greatest title for a book in history? I think it probably is.

cover a book called HELP! I CAN'T STOP SHITTING SNAKES by Michael Bettendorf

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Book #9 of Holiday – Kassandra and the Wolf by Margarita Karapanou (trans. NC Germanacos). This is a fever dream of depravity, a nightmare of subjugation, a fantasy of revenge. it’s either a masterpiece of subversive fiction, or a sensationalist debut novel. Maybe both. More in Alt Text.

Book #9 of Holiday – Kassandra and the Wolf by Margarita Karapanou (trans. NC Germanacos).
If I go to a different country, I always try to read a book from where I’m headed. Usually these turn out well. Kassandra and the Wolf, however, is something quite different. It isn’t quite like anything I’ve ever read. Even now I’m a bit flummoxed by it.
First published in English translation in 1974, and only made available in Greek two years later, after the fall of the military junta that ruled between 1967 and 1974, Kassandra and the Wolf is a fever dream of depravity, a nightmare of subjugation, a fantasy of revenge. Its central character is a young girl, Kassandra, who narrates short vignettes from her life, such as the decapitation of her dolls, her violation by almost every man in her life, the tying up of the local general as well as his wife.
The tone, however, is not bleak, but matter of fact, which makes the violence feel even more extreme. And this is a violent book. Viscerally so. Karapanou herself called it a ‘Scary Monster of a book’ and with good reason. Kassandra rarely attaches a moral outlook to her actions, or those that are acted upon her. The vignettes skip around in time, too, so we’re constantly moving, constantly seeing different sides of the same characters. Her grandfather is always on the cusp of suicide, or has just died from it, for example. It is a brutalising view of childhood.
It’s hard to know quite what to make of this novel – it often felt like there was a key I was missing. It’s possible that this is an allegory for the Greek political situation, or equally it’s plausible it has nothing to do with it. Similarly, it’s possible this is a masterpiece of subversive, incendiary fiction, or merely a sensationalist, problematic debut novel. In this instance, I think both could be true, and neither. It’s a confusion I suspect the author would enjoy.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Since when did The Sun become the paper that the Today Programme on Radio 4 used to begin debates? Mentioned twice now in the lede before interviews regarding the Small Boats

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Book #8 of holiday. Ian Rankin's The Heights. His first standalone novel in two decades, The Heights introduces Detective Gillian Gish. I say introduces as this feels very much like an audition for a new series, one I think would be more than welcome. More response in ALT text. #crimenovels

Tablet with THE HEIGHTS by Ian Rankin on its display.

His first standalone novel in two decades, The Heights (coming in October) is set between the glamorous West End and the once grubby Tottenham Hale, and introduces Detective Gillian Gish. I say introduces as this feels very much like an audition for a new series, one I think would be more than welcome.
As in his Rebus novels, Rankin excels at character and place: whether high or low, morally bankrupt or on the side of the angels, he manages to give room and life to even the most minor characters and settings. He is good on the changing faces of cities, the regeneration of the East End, for example, while also showing what stays the same (violence, organised crime, desperation) even when house prices skyrocket.
Gish is a fine new cop, and the team around her are run-in, mordantly funny, quietly believable. The plot is, as you might expect, precision tooled – Rankin moves people into position and reveals secrets better than any writer around – and effortlessly brings us to a satisfying conclusion.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I didn't share the same feelings as regards the BIG EVENT he needs to remember, but I can see what you mean. I confess that I didn't notice the airport howler, but another longlisted title has several more howling mistakes in its pages...

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I think it's one of the best novels of recent years, even if she doesn't know City from Heathrow...

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Book #7 of holiday reading – The End of Everything by M. John Harrison. A consistently unnerving and rewarding reading experience - one that that lingers, and haunts, like a unusual stain in a seaside hotel room. See Alt text for full review. #beachreads #holidayreading #bookerprize booker

Book #7 of holiday reading – The End of Everything by M. John Harrison. Confusion and obfuscation are dangerous literary devices; for everyone who loves the woozy unsureity of Ishiguru’s The Unconsoled (me for example) there are many others who are left floundering as things are left unexplained and vague. The End of Everything revels in its lack of specificity, turning it into a virtue, an essential component of the novel. It makes for a consistently unnerving, something rewarding, sometimes frustrating reading experience.
A crisis has occurred in England. Exactly what has happened, we do not quite learn, the memory of the event having blurred in characters’ minds, but the weather has turned on the island, and the city of London is overrun by aliens known as the iGhetti, who can cause glitches in human perception. In this ruined society, Phillip Tennent finds an artefact on the beach which forces him inland, closer to the heart of the shattered kingdom.
There are perhaps two ways to read The End of Everything: the first way is to look for clues, patterns, information to piece together what has happened, and what is happening; the second is to give into the dreamlike state of the novel, let it come to you without exerting yourself upon it. I gave up with the first way after about fifteen pages, and I can safely say that I enjoyed it so much more when I stopped trying to work out the specifics. By the end, I felt I knew what was happening at a subliminal level, even if I couldn’t be certain to be able to explain it.
There are several parallels, subtle and not so subtle, with the hellfire of today, and Harrison’s burnished, elegant and elegiac prose is equal to his subtle world building. It is a marvellous novel, one that lingers, and haunts, like a unusual stain in a seaside hotel room.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

My favourite of AB's. Deeply strange and very moving.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Book #6 of holiday – Girl, 1983 by Linn Ullman. Compared to Duras and Ernaux! Set in 1980s Oslo, Paris, and New York! It looked perfect. And it’s perfectly good, just not quite as good as all of that suggests. More reaction in Alt Text of image. #holidayreads #beachreads

Girl, 1983 by Linn Ullman, on a beachchair by a pool.

Ullman is superb on place, on the feel of place, on the substance of a specific time, –even the short, barely welcome, scenes set during COVID have an insight that is beyond the usual tropes and memories of lockdown – and the complex relationship between the narrator and her mother is beautifully nuanced and subtly handled. She is also excellent on the Matryoshka nature of selfhood – referring to herself as the girl, as though she is a different person entirely.
And the girl makes a mistake. The mistake is to leave a party and have no idea where her Paris hotel is. She is 16, alone, and the only person she knows is a much older man, a photographer who has promised her cover shoots for Vogue. In the middle of the night, without any other option, she goes to his apartment. From there, a relationship of sorts begins, one that is far from uncommon in the fashion set in which she finds herself.
Some of the stylistic decisions made by Ullman land with precision, featherlight and devastating. The constant gnaw of doubt between whether she acted with autonomy or was a victim – or both at the same time – is shown through repetition, with alternative readings of the facts of the matter. But while I could see the lineage and links with Duras and Ernaux, Girl, 1983 didn’t quite coalesce into something truly memorable.
While it’s hard for me to put a finger on exactly what it is that Girl,1983 lacks, I think perhaps its lack of focus is largely to blame. In places it feels scattergun, as though stitched together from random sources that do not quite fit. It is by no means a failure as a novel, it just doesn’t reach the heights that those to whom she has been compared could reach.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Book #5 of holiday – Asylum Piece by Anna Kavan. I love Kavan’s work – especially Julia & the Bazooka – but for some reason this has remained unread on my bookshelf for around twenty years. I decided to take it with me. I am very glad I did. More response in Alt text #beachreads @pushkinpress.com

Anna Kavan's Asylum Piece, a glass of white wine and a bag of crisps.

Book #5 of holiday – Asylum Piece by Anna Kavan. I love Kavan’s work – especially Julia & the Bazooka – but for some reason this has remained unread on my bookshelf for around twenty years. I didn’t think too much about it, just noticed it the day before we set off and decided to take it with me. I am very glad I did.

The stories contained within Asylum Piece are short, dream (or perhaps nightmare) like, and utterly devastating. The autofictional aspect is clear in many of them, but those that take a more twisted, almost folklorish riff on themes of dependence, mental health and the duplicity of the self are the most impressive.

I finished thinking that Asylum Piece would make the basis for a brilliant play; but also, just how cleverly it works as a suite of linked stories. They remain crystalline in my memory – this is increasingly rare – and deserve to be read, studied, loved.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Book #4 of holiday, SWITZY by Emma Cline. I’m going to say it now: if this doesn’t win the Booker, I will be genuinely shocked. It is a truly extraordinary novel; lithe and coiled, astonishingly written, and deeply moving. More thoughts in image alt text #summerreading #books #bookerprize

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Book #3 of holiday: Steve Cavanagh's ONE OF US IS GUILTY. It's a holiday tradition to read the latest Eddie Flynn legal thriller, and this was a total joy from start to finish. More response in the image alt text. #holidayreading #beachreads #books @headlinebooks.bsky.social

One of Us is Guilty by Steve Cavanagh, cover image on a tablet against a backdrop of an open brick barbeque.

One of Us is Guilty has the usual street-smart, con-man turned lawyer shenanigans, but allied with an even more interesting set of antagonists (modelled, not so subtly, on the Murdoch clan). I was so immersed, I was reading while barbequing...

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

She was. I really liked her stuff and her.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Mark Carney's use of the word 'hydronyms' is the sickest of sick burns. You can just imagine Trump looking vacant, asking those around him what it means and them knowing that Carney's made him look like a carrot-tinged toss hammer.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Well it can't be a rights issue as those would have lapsed years ago. Maybe it's because she's not 'obvious'. Days is just off the scale though. What it does with time is truly a thing of wonder.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I've been on at anyone who will listen to bring her back (Days is a masterpiece for example) and Faber were supposed to be doing one at least but that was a few years ago...

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Eva Figes is one of my all time favourite writers; criminally overlooked I think. So glad you're reading her.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I LOVED The Door - will look out for this.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

book #2 of holiday. On the Calculation of Volume, 5. Not coming until November, this is the latest instalment of the most interesting and unusual writing project of recent years. For my thoughts, look at the Alt Text of the image. @faberbooks.bsky.social #holidayreading #beachreads

A copy of ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME book V, on a beach beside a bottle of Alfa beer.

Book #2 of holiday: Solvej Balle's, On the Calculation of Volume, 5. Not coming until November, this is the latest instalment of the most interesting and unusual writing project of recent years, I inhaled it in a day, then spent the night trying to think through its implications. I think its great power is Balle’s absolute commitment to her vision, even when it raises questions the novel cannot answer. Why are there no bad actors repeating the same day over and over? Why have none gone crazy and begun committing heinous crimes? Or have they, and Tara just doesn’t realise. It is a book that forces us to confront the fact of our own insularity, the fact that we can only see the world through our own aging eyes. Other volumes have ended with proper, almost Dickensian cliff-hangers, but volume five closes with a deeper, more elemental, feeling of the nearing of the end. The penultimate volume comes in April next year and I already cannot wait.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Book 1 of holiday, Marlon James's The Disappearers. Unfortunately, I can't say much about it as am reviewing it for the FT. I can say that I love the cover though. #holidayreads #marlonjames #bookerlonglist

ARC of Marlon James's novel THE DISAPPEARERS on a table outside a Greek Villa

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Dolly. One of the true pantheon. A great in all sense. Rest in Rhinestones, you wonderful genius.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Count Count: I love to count. 1 HA HA HA. 2 HA HA HA. 3 HA HA HA SB: I can't go on Count Count: I can. 4 HA HA HA. 5 HA HA HA

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

The scene where they walk through endless doors at speed is one that I think about every single time I watch a 'serious' crime drama.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Yes, the references to Teddy Boys and violent scottish men will be wholly relevant.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

This has scarred me. I remember when Russ Abbot's TV show was cancelled and Bella Emburg was interviewed by ITV Breakfast and she said that Russ Abbot would go down as one of the true geniuses of comedy. I didn't believe her then. And I for once was proved right.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Congratulations, very much deserved. Though I'm wondering whether you've been moonlighting on your writing and branched out to children's fiction...

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Ah, Stu - yes, of course, so sorry it didn't happen. Really deserved to x

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Interesting Booker List, but shocked and surprised not to see Valeria Luiselli and Keith Ridgeway on there - probably my two favourite novels of the year. Glad to see May We Feed The King on there though.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Tonight I saw three people reading Midnight's Children. Is there a reason why it's popular again?

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Mutti passata/chopped tomatoes. The wines I like (almost always one of the three is on offer). Philadelphia Cream Cheese,

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Prater Vienna, nice view of the Ferris Wheel. Spanakopita, sumac and cumin roasted chicken legs, iced spice bun, Gruner Veltliner (ice cold).

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I never realised we were so close in birthday. I am just older though (my half century was 6 July). Happy continuing birthday.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

They are in my house. My eldest son is puppet obsessed and dislikes football. When the Muppets came on he cheered like they had personally won the World Cup.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

On Tuesday I saw a man riding a bike while whistling the Jurassic Park theme tune at a deafening volume. A minute later, a man wearing a wizard outfit holding six bottles of orange juice like he'd just magicked them from the air. No one batted an eyelid. I have no idea what this means for the world.

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Stuart Evers @stuartevers.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

So pleased for Rebecca Perry's May We Feed the King winning the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. It's been one of my favourite novels this year, and I hope it means many more people will read and love.