Coastalblog

As Coastalblog falls ever more drastically off the pace when it comes to the business of getting through fifty books in a year, let me at least take the opportunity to hail reading this book, because in doing so I fulfilled in part one of the main aims of the challenge: catching up with stuff I really should have got round to by now. Prize winning in 2004, defined as a "book of the decade" in 2009, finally got round to by your humble correspondent in 2018. Particularly shaming as I suspect I borrowed it off my mate Celeste in about 2008. But get round to it I did, and I'm deeply pleased that I did so. This is an exceedingly satisfying read. Levy's command of tone and voice is convincing, and impressive given the range of characters she inhabits in this book. As with Richard Georges' poems, it would be presumptuous to say that I fully understand, but Levy's depiction of the intrinsic racism of post-wart Britain reads convincingly. We've all met a Bernard ...

Been having to sit on this one for a while, as my review of this book for Stride Magazine was sat waiting for its turn. Having been published I can now, finally get round to blogging it (yes, yes, I know it's been over a week, that's quite quick for me though). I won't retread that here, if you want close reading, click the link. When my review copy came through, I initially thought this wasn't going to be my cup of tea at all. My poetry reading tends towards the school loosely described as linguistically innovative. I rarely read poetry this straightforward, so I wasn't sure I quite had the toolkit to deal with it. But I realise that I'm getting less dogmatic as I age (there's probably a blog post in there somewhere, so I shelved preconceptions and got stuck in. Having fretted already about the preponderance of middle aged white blokes in these pages, Georges' starkly lyrical poems, harshly lit by a pitiless Caribbean sun came as a healthy counterb...