Simon Demetriou

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 ...

If you’re going to tell a story that even your narrator acknowledges is unoriginal, you’ve effectively got three methods of ensuring your story is better than other, similar ...

If Wikipedia is to be believed (and what kind of a world would we be living in if we couldn’t make our way with this one certainty to hand?), ...

I’ve never really been a fan of parades. A long stream of people and things marching past with seemingly the whole point being made up of waiting for the ...

Given the splash Joseph O’Neill made with Netherland and the 10 years that have elapsed since his last novel, there is a tendency in the critical media to want to ...

At the very end of Rufi Thorpe’s fourth novel, her narrator and eponymous protagonist declares, ‘…that’s all art is, in the end. One person trying to get another ...

There are books that leave a few lines imprinted upon you when you’re done. I’ve already annoyed the unfortunate souls that live with me by my constant repetition ...

Can a fast-paced slow-burn be a thing? If it can, then that would be helpful as it’s really the only way I can explain what reading Thomas Grattan’s ...