Simon Demetriou

If someone ever says to you, ‘I swear, it was never as psychopathic as it sounds’, you can be immediately certain of two things: one, it absolutely was that psychopathic; ...

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault argues that the modern penal system aims to make its objects into ‘docile bodies’ through the shift away from punishment as a public spectacle and ...

Words make promises that we’re too often left scrambling to fulfil. In Jessica George’s debut novel, the word that’s dragged her protagonist, Madeleine Wright, behind it for ...

In the course of Shy, Max Porter’s fourth novel, the eponymous first-person narrator identifies the following languages: ‘night-end’, ‘badger’ and ‘heartsore’. It’s telling of a book about how ...

A good writer can write a bad book, but that doesn’t mean we have to forgive them for it. In Cursed Bread, Sophie Mackintosh shows off her capacity to ...

‘Guilty pleasure’ really is a stupid phrase – unless of course what you take pleasure in is something truly awful like kicking kittens or tax fraud. Surely, we should all just ...

From The Real Housewives of Orange County to Yellowstone, the lives of the immensely rich seem to have a hold over the popular imagination that allows almost any cultural production ...

In her acknowledgements, Claire Jimenez writes that ‘colonialism, racism, and femicide have been forces that shaped my reality and the way I am seen or not seen in this world’. ...

If you’ve read Jane Eyre, did you ever wonder why as readers we cheer Jane on when she refuses Rochester’s proposal to live in a faux marriage, but ...

Have you heard the one about the dead girl? In I Have Some Questions for You, the words ‘It was the one’ ring out, over and over again: ‘It was ...

Having become infatuated with Jen Beagin via her most recent novel, Big Swiss, I am now rationing her two previous books so as not to run out too quickly. Pretend ...

‘…when spooky fucking haunted dolls start writing messages on the wall, you should get the fuck out.’ This seems like a fairly self-evident truth, but Louise, the protagonist of Grady ...

I’m in love. Among the many crude ways in which I judge books, one of the most common and basic is whether or not a book makes me want ...

Now, I can’t pretend to have read any of the Icelandic sagas or eddas, which are the literary works in whose tradition All the Horses of Iceland purports to ...

Using rock-climbing as a metaphor for life’s challenges, defeats and successes sounds like a trite idea. One would assume, therefore, that a novel that placed this metaphor at its ...

A debut novel is always exciting. When it’s a debut novel that brings together corporate law, third wave coffee, and doomsday survivalism written by someone with a history of ...

Writing a murder mystery in which it turns out that the people you most suspect are the people who deserve the most suspicion might be seen as edgy and counter-conventional. ...

Opening reviews with admissions of ignorance is becoming something of a habit, but, once again, I have to admit that Tom Perrotta’s 2022 sequel to 1998’s Election was my first ...

Very Cold People is an odd book for me to review, because while it has plenty of literary merit, it is a book that I just didn’t enjoy reading. ...

A coming-of-age novel that repeatedly references The Catcher in the Rye is setting itself a hard task. However, while Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion cannot live up to ...

I know I’m doing this all wrong, but I confess that Stella Maris is the first Cormac McCarthy novel I’ve read. (If that immediately disqualifies me from expressing ...

The purpose of Donald Trump’s existence is a teleological quandary that has perplexed many in recent years. The best answer we yet possess is that he was thrust into ...

Look, if you choose to read Percival Everett’s latest novel, as I recommend you do, there will be times when you feel a little stupid. Or very stupid. Unless ...

The allure of the overlooked discovery is one that seduces all enthusiasts, and the recent publication of Toad, which had lain dormant since its rejection by publishers in 1971, would seem ...