Simon Demetriou

First impressions matter, which is why you really can’t trust anyone who tells you never to judge a book by its cover (these people will have made a lot ...

It is so clearly understood as to be barely worth saying that parenthood changes your life. And yet, every truism needs to be true, and every truth can be profoundly ...

There’s a moment in Gliff where its narrator, a child named Briar, reflects upon reading a dictionary that ‘there was such a thing as a family of words… all ...

I like romantic comedies. I like crime fiction. I like novels that expose the misogyny and gender imbalances that still run through western ‘developed’ societies. And I like anything that ...

Another debut novel by a successful poet, and another opportunity to repeat my now truistic standpoint that one really can’t go wrong in turning the opening page by one ...

The 2024-25 academic year marks the fourth edition of The Heritage New Writing Contest, a national creative writing competition run by The Heritage Private School, looking to find, celebrate and ...

‘They said she was wayward. They said it was all her fault. They said she had done something wrong. They lied.’ The plural forces of a misogynistic system lined up ...

If I had written a list of the best books published in 2022, there is no question that Weike Wang’s second novel, Joan is Okay, would have made my top 5. ...

Lesa Cline-Ransome’s moving novel in verse One Big Open Sky is riven by questions of freedom. Early on in the tale of 10 black families heading West out of Mississippi ...

I began 2024 with a review of the 28th Jack Reacher novel, in which I wrote that if what you want is a massive, bloody angel of righteousness doing a whole ...

If you’re reading this review from the vantage point of having always felt utterly fulfilled by every element of your existence, then what you’ll find between the pages ...

The end of a year is naturally a time for reflection, and it would be a sad thing if reflection couldn’t be turned into a set of unjustifiable and ...

In a recent review, I committed a sin. I referenced a novel that I had not read. As so often, one’s first step into the mire of corruption leads ...

Speaking in 1895, Oscar Wilde responded to a critic questioning the fact that all his characters tend to sound like him, with the assertion that such criticism could only exist because ...

Last year, I read The English Experience by Julie Schumacher, in the course of which I discovered the existence of The Thurber Prize for American Humor – which she had won ...

By Simon Demetriou As Alexandra Petri clearly states in her introduction, this is a book for that order of person who examines US History textbooks and exclaims, “Oh no! We ...

As Alexandra Petri clearly states in her introduction, this is a book for that order of person who examines US History textbooks and exclaims, “Oh no! We have only one ...

By Simon Demetriou We are told early on in Bullwinkel’s terrific debut novel that it ‘was not as if women’s boxing was, or ever had, or ever would ...

As so often, I am late to the party on this one; The Empusium is my first Tokarczuk read. The party I anticipated was a big one: a novel by ...

There are times in life when what you really need is an expensive psychic to tell you ‘This is bigger than you and your silly heteronormative daydreams, Jane. This is ...

It seems a little uncharitable towards a book in which the professedly at-least-semi-autobiographical narrator uses writing, and is using this writing specifically, as a kind of coping mechanism for PTSD, ...

Everybody knows that Arthur is the once and future king of Britain. The premise of Lev Grossman’s latest sprawling fantasy is to explore what happens in the early part ...

The very short version of this review reads as follows: If you haven’t read High Fidelity, read that. If you like High Fidelity, read Good Material (after watching the ...

Dave Eggers has been a big name since the publication of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which I saw around but never bothered to read since the title was ...