Christopher Burlinson

Do it, it's brilliant!!

Poster for Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film, The Secret Agent.

This film is a banger and well worth seeing on a big screen if you get the chance.

Agreed! The ending, I thought, was fantastic - so many ways for it to be cheap, or glib, or neat, or just dull - but he got it just right.

Just saw this today, too: it’s outstandingly good, isn’t it!

Q&A with Maria Stepanova about "The Disappearing Act" We’re eagerly awaiting the publication next week of The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova, translated by Sasha Dugdale. Today we’re sharing a special pre-release interview with Maria Stepanova, one ...

‘My own personal choice is to continue writing – simply because that is the only thing I can do to counterbalance the distortion. Someone has to use Russian as a language of love’

- Maria Stepanova on Disappearing Act
@fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social

shop.pushkinhouse.org/blogs/booksh...

Excellent!!

I hadn’t realised! She’s great here!

The 39 Steps

Missed The Secret Agent tonight, so here’s another man on the run…

It’s excellent: I hope you love it just as much!

Maria Stepanova, The Disappearing Act, trans. Sasha Dugdale

“In the summer of 2023 the grass carried on growing as if nothing at all was wrong.” Maria Stepanova, The Disappearing Act, trans. @sashadugdale.bsky.social - I loved In Memory of Memory, and I’m loving this.

Guatave Flaubert, Three Tales, trans. Roger Whitehouse

Flaubert, Three Tales (Trois Contes), trans. Roger Whitehouse. I feel like I should have / must have read this thirty years ago. Maybe I did: thank god for a bad memory. It hit me so hard: the last paragraph of A Simple Heart is so absurd, so devastating, so ecstatic., but all three left me reeling.

Any merit in the drivel I write comes from learning painstakingly how to write essays.

To assay - to test - exactly what I thought and knew about a matter.

Great essayists - Woolf, Orwell, Bacon, Montaigne, Hazlett - are utter intellectual joys as you read how they test themselves on topics too.

It did -- just so good! But I had also forgotten how funny it is, and having a (laughing) audience really brought that out too.

I think I know what you mean, yes 😄, and no, that wouldn't have been my cup of tea either! I don't find this film precious or mannered at all, though, and was really surprised by how un-dated it felt (in spite of being very much of its time). It has an amazing openness to experiment and experience.

Cleo from 5 to 7: my first time seeing this on the big screen. Brilliant, astonishing, overwhelming; this film just has everything.

Thank you! There’s so much love for these books: I’m certainly going to keep going!

I am persuaded!!

I will persevere! So many strong recommendations here, not least yours, which makes me think I just didn’t have my head in the right place for this one. Thank you!

Thank you! Am definitely going to read the third!

Thanks!

I really will stick with it!

That’s a really powerful recommendation, thank you, and also a real encouragement! Thank you! 🙏

Anthony Powell, A Buyer’s Market

A lean reading month, at the end of which I trudged through this. Powell’s prose slips down well enough, but I just couldn’t find much to chew on. I really did want this to be a 2026 project; I imagine it all works cumulatively, but… is it worth persevering with?

Congratulations!

It does feel like that, doesn't it! (Have you seen No Other Choice, by the way? I saw it last week: thought it was very good indeed.)

It’s wonderful, isn’t it!!

Mine too! It’s compulsive, isn’t it.

It really is, isn’t it! I don’t think I love it quite as much as Miss Jean Brodie, but still - wonderful stuff! (And I’ve teed up The Ballad of Peckham Rye next)

I just started this too!

Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington

Reading it now: loving it!