MADE BY SEA AND WOOD, IN DARKNESS BY ALEXANDROS PLASATIS – REVIEW

Posted on April 21, 2021 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged abuse, Alexandros Plasatis, anthropology, consent, Egypt, featured, Greece, homophobia, humour, Kavala, literature, Made by Sea and Wood in Darkness, migration, misogyny, novel, police, review, sex, sexual hara, sexual violence, surrealism, trans, translation, violence, xenophobia.

By Carmina Masoliver

Content warning: references to and short descriptions of sexual harassment, sexual violence, xenophobia, homophobic & transphobic abuse.

Made by Sea and Wood, in Darkness, the debut novel by Alexandros Plasatis, weaves together a collage of stories that tell the experience of Egyptian immigrants in Greece through a variety of voices. The stories are primarily set in and around Café Papaya in Kavala, where Pavlo the waiter works nights, acting as both a main character and an observer of the Egyptian fishermen. In snapshots of a male underworld, violence dominates this narrative, as the central female character Angie the barmaid fights against being cast as a victim.

BRAVE NEW WORLD IS (STILL) HERE

Posted on August 1, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged abuse, adaptation, aldous huxley, alexis soloski, books, brave new world, David Wiener, erasure, featured, gender, homophobia, John the Savage, literature, New London, novel, privilege, queerness, sexuality, soma, violence.

By Vyvyan René

CW: sexual assault, rape

David Wiener’s TV adaptation of Huxley’s classic dystopia launched on Sky One and Peacock on July 15th 2020.

Set in New London – in a society where class is enforced by genetic engineering and hypnopaedic indoctrination, the use of the euphoric drug soma is universal, public orgies are wholesome fun and ‘mother’ is a swear word – Brave New World is a novel with many themes. One of them is misogyny and the mechanisms by which it is expressed and perpetuated. Consequently, the portrayal of the novel’s central female character, Lenina Crowne, and her relationship with John the Savage (the emotional core of the story) are huge contributing factors to the success or failure of any adaptation. Wiener faces the challenge of depicting a society he describes as ‘hugely problematic’ without condoning it, which raises questions about how the problematic aspects of the novel could, or even should be, adapted.

‘JUST A NOTHING’: ASEXUAL ERASURE IN ADAPTATIONS OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged acephobia, adaptation, allosexual, Andrew Scott, Anthony Minghella, asexuality, Bojack Horseman, erasure, featured, homophobia, homoromanticism, homosexuality, Matt Damon, novel, Patricia Highsmith, privilege, queerness, sexuality, Steven Zaillan, The Talented Mr Ripley, Todd Chavez, voyeurism.

By Vyvyan René

Few novels with openly queer protagonists are as enduringly loved, or have achieved such acclaim, as Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley.

Tom Ripley is a charming, Machiavellian antihero whose talents include ‘forging signatures… and impersonating practically anybody’, and whose unreciprocated worship of Dickie Greenleaf, the prodigal son of a New York shipping tycoon, leads him to kill Dickie and assume his identity. He is also asexual, yet not a single adaptation of Highsmith’s work has addressed this. With a new adaptation in the works, in the form of a Showtime drama directed by Steven Zaillan and starring Andrew Scott, it’s important to acknowledge and reflect on the ways in which this aspect of Ripley’s character has been erased.

A SMALL HOLE, SLIGHTLY CHARRED: CLOTHING AND CLASS IN THE SECRET HISTORY

Posted on June 23, 2020 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged class, classics, clothing, Donna Tartt, east coast, fashion, featured, fiction, gender, gender conformity, literature, novel, prejudice, privilege, The Secret History, upper class, USA, WASP, working class.

By Vyvyan René

‘I was still standing. I’m shot, I thought, I’m shot. I reached down and touched my stomach. Blood. There was a small hole, slightly charred, in my white shirt: my Paul Smith shirt, I thought, with a pang of anguish. I’d paid a week’s salary for it in San Francisco.’

A novel preoccupied with appearances and the dark realities they can conceal, it is no wonder that clothes are a recurring theme in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. As protagonist Richard notices the gunshot in his expensive shirt at the climax, his ‘anguish’ stems less from the injury to his physical body than to the painstakingly assembled body of signifiers he has spent the novel maintaining; a ‘small hole’ through which his history, in its imperfect secrecy, is exposed.

REVIEW: THE DAY OF THE DUCK, BY HELEN STRATFORD AND LAWRENCE BRADBY

Posted on October 31, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged art, arts, book, Brexit, Community, dialect, Donna Haraway, duck, East Europe, Ely, English, featured, Helen Stratford, illustration, jargon, language, Lawrence Bradby, migrant, migration, noir, norfolk, norwich, novel, poetry, Remain, review, Vote Leave, xenophobia.

by Ewa Giera

Content warning: xenophobia, discrimination

The Day of the Duck, by Helen Stratford and Lawrence Bradby, takes form of neither a scripted play, nor a novel: intertwined with visual diagrams, elements of script and a simple, character-driven narrative, the book is a unique experience as opposed to a traditional novel. The story revolves around a Muscovy duck, the last of its species in a town heavily based on Ely in Cambridgeshire, whose goal is to discover why its brethren have all disappeared. The book is framed as a noir detective-style plot – the Muscovy duck takes on the role of the detective and asks all the uncomfortable questions to people whose names it’s not concerned with, which serves the aim of having the characters translate as everymen.Continue Reading

THREE LATIN AMERICAN WRITERS

Posted on July 4, 2018 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged arts, berlin, book, Carmen Boullosa, carmen maria machado, Chloe Aridjis, cuba, featured, identity, latin american, Latinx, Law and Order, magical realism, Mexico, mexico heritage, novel, overview, personal, peter bush, queer, review, romance, self, short story, travel, women writers, writing.

by Carmina Masoliver

On a recent trip to Mexico, I decided to take with me three books by authors of Latin American heritage, including two of Mexican background, and one Cuban. All were women. Aside from eating the most delicious chimichangas, learning about the ancient Mayan ruins, and climbing up the Ixmoja part of the Nohoch Mul, I spent a lot of my time reading these authors by the sea with a strawberry daiquiri. Within just one week I had nearly consumed them all and discovered a new love of Latin American writing.Continue Reading

INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR AND UEA ALUMNUS JOHN DENNEHY

Posted on July 22, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged arrest, art, artivism, book, border, Colombia, creative non fiction, creative writing, Ecuador, George W. Bush, illegal, immigration, interview, Iraq War, John Dennehy, migration, New York, novel, police, privilege, protest, resists, revolution, Trump, UEA.

by Hannah Rose

Your new book, Illegal, tells the story of your arrest and deportation from Ecuador and your consequent return over the Colombian border with the help of corrupt police. There’s also a love story which runs through it. Crime and love both sell books – was this thematic mix deliberate?

My original intent was to focus on borders and revolution but almost every person who read a draft, especially early on, wanted to know more about the love story. So I kept adding more with each new edit. We’ve all been in love so that shared experience makes it relatable and easier to digest. That common basis is a great launch pad to touch on everything else, too.Continue Reading

REVIEW: THE BRICKS THAT BUILT THE HOUSES, BY KATE TEMPEST

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged #readwomen, Akala, Alex Preston, art, artivism, Benjamin Zephaniah, billy bragg, book, Brecht, character, disenfranchised, Everybody Down, government, inequality, Kate Tempest, Laura Marling, millennials, myth, mythologies, novel, poet, poetry, powerless, prose, Regina Spektor, review, Shakespeare, solidarity, spoken word, The bricks that built the houses, women artists, writing, youth.

by Carmina Masoliver

Kate Tempest is well known for her work within the world of poetry and music, yet her latest venture sees her trying her hand at prose, using her original modern mythologies weaved into a different form. Although the points of move from character to character, Becky stands out to be the central character.

The first chapter made me think of the question uttered by both Shakespeare and Brecht about the role of art, suggesting to possibility for it to be both a mirror and hammer, when it comes to most peoples’ realities. Yet, at times it felt like the outlook was too cynical, too similar to the thoughts in the heads in this generation where we so often feel powerless to make change. It was almost too real, holding a truth too close to the bone.Continue Reading

TRUTH OR FICTION? THE WORLD OF HYPERNORMALISATION

Posted on October 25, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged Adam Curtis, Alexei Yurchak, arts, Brexit, conspiracy, cyberspace, documentary, echo chamber, exposé, fiction, film, humanity, hypernormalisation, meatspace, narrative, novel, politics, postmodern, power, psyche, review, Soviet, surreal, Trump, truth, writing.

by Liam Hawkes

Surreal. Beautiful. Terrifying. Adam Curtis’ newest documentary can be described in many ways. It bombards us with messages and narratives which seem to have emancipatory power by simply exposing the chains we all appear to wear. This mesmerising piece of film-making taps into the psyche of human consciousness, getting to the root of how we feel and why we feel it. Once again Curtis has created a terrifying exposé of the confusing and uncertain world we live in.
Continue Reading

LITERATURE VS GENRE – SECONDS OUT (PART 2)

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged academia, Angela Carter, art, Arthur Krystal, books, China Miéville, commercial, Connie Willis, criticism, Docx, Don Winslow, fantasy, form, genre, Girl with all the gifts, guest, high brow, horror, Jonathan Jones, Kurt Vonnegut, literary fiction, literature, Lord Dunsany, low brow, Melanie, Mervyn Peake, metaphor, mike carey, money, mr carey, myth, novel, Oliver Burkeman, pandora, politics, Pulp, Ray Bradbury, Raymond Chandler, reading, school, sci-fi, smart, study, Ted Chiang, Ursula LeGuin, writer, writing, zombie.

by Mike Carey

Continued from part one, published on The Norwich Radical two weeks ago.

I hate to rake up ancient history, but here’s another example from a little further back – dredged up because in this case it is a writer of literary novels (Edward Docx, in the Observer in 2010) who’s saying this, so the agenda is maybe a little more naked.

Even good genre… is by definition a constrained form of writing. There are conventions and these limit the material. That’s the way writing works and lots of people who don’t write novels don’t seem to get this: if you need a detective, if you need your hero to shoot the badass CIA chief, if you need faux-feminist shopping jokes, then great; but the correlative of these decisions is a curtailment in other areas. If you are following conventions, then a significant percentage of the thinking and imagining has been taken out of the exercise. Lots of decisions are already made.

Considering that Docx rails against “a fundamental dishonesty” in the way this subject is usually discussed, I’m going to pick my words with care.

novel

BRAVE NEW WORLD IS (STILL) HERE

By Vyvyan René

‘JUST A NOTHING’: ASEXUAL ERASURE IN ADAPTATIONS OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY

By Vyvyan René

A SMALL HOLE, SLIGHTLY CHARRED: CLOTHING AND CLASS IN THE SECRET HISTORY

By Vyvyan René

REVIEW: THE DAY OF THE DUCK, BY HELEN STRATFORD AND LAWRENCE BRADBY

THREE LATIN AMERICAN WRITERS

INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR AND UEA ALUMNUS JOHN DENNEHY

REVIEW: THE BRICKS THAT BUILT THE HOUSES, BY KATE TEMPEST

TRUTH OR FICTION? THE WORLD OF HYPERNORMALISATION

LITERATURE VS GENRE – SECONDS OUT (PART 2)

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