@lucieelven.bsky.social
'Schweblin uses successive crises as a means to break open her characters’ mechanical routines and force them to locate raw feelings.'
Lucie Elven: Finding the soul beneath the skin
‘David Lynch had a peculiarly subtractive aesthetic. Just as the more you see, the less comprehensible it becomes, the less you can see (the lower the lighting, the poorer the quality) the more there is to look for.’
Ruby Hamilton on the filmmaker: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Likely, he won’t come to her anymore, despite the fact that she has avoided any ethical question and thinks there is no need for them to be led into a discussion of the difference between, say, truthfulness and truth.’
Read a new story by Diane Williams: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘As J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, she criss-crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of rare manuscripts to add to his collection, outbidding and outsmarting rivals wherever she went.’
Francesca Wade on Belle da Costa Greene:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Two books from above on a wooden table. They’re identical but in different colours. The one on the left is yellow with red and green chunky text that says Fair, the one on the right is blue with chunky black text. Fair the life-art of translation by Jen Calleja
Books have arrived @prototypepubs.bsky.social HQ, out 29 May prototypepublishing.co.uk
15.05.2025 13:02 — 👍 24 🔁 3 💬 2 📌 1
‘Frame hated noise. She claimed that her street became too loud when, after Macmillan came to power, the residents had the money to buy TVs and record players, though she herself blasted out Schubert to disguise her illicit typing when her landlord was sleeping.’
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Janet Frame found herself stuck in a psychiatric system that took her feeling for language as evidence of madness. When she compared herself to Pierre in “War and Peace”, her doctors thought she was describing a schizophrenic delusion.’
@lucieelven.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Janet Frame found herself stuck in a psychiatric system that took her feeling for language as evidence of madness. When she compared herself to Pierre in “War and Peace”, her doctors thought she was describing a schizophrenic delusion.’
@lucieelven.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Nathan Dragon's collection The Champ is Here sounds really interesting - in a peak NOON way I'd say :) - if you're not convinced by Lucie Elven's lovely review, there's some samples available at nathandragon.com
13.05.2025 12:06 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0Worth every penny!
13.05.2025 12:43 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
I loved making a guest appearance on Rachel’s substack to write about (and recommend) Nathan Dragon’s beautiful short story collection, The Champ Is Here.
open.substack.com/pub/rachelco...
I’m talking to Vijay Khurana about his extremely tense and impressive novel THE PASSENGER SEAT (Peninsula) on Thursday 22 May at @burleyfisher.bsky.social. It’s the London launch. Free tickets!
burleyfisherbooks.com/products/lau...
‘Janet Frame’s writing is often compared to Faulkner’s, and her family history reads like a Southern Gothic novel. Yet Frame can be an extraordinarily cheerful, funny writer. Language was a source of continual revelation.’
@lucieelven.bsky.social on the novelist: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Janet Frame found herself stuck in a psychiatric system that took her feeling for language as evidence of madness. When she compared herself to Pierre in “War and Peace”, her doctors thought she was describing a schizophrenic delusion.’
@lucieelven.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
As a gift, she bought him silkworms, which they kept in a shoebox. Frame picked mulberry leaves for the worms to eat and ‘in the silence of the night as I lay in bed I heard a sound like the turning of tiny pages in a tiny library ... the sound of steady chewing and chomping.’
12.05.2025 04:13 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
I love this essay from Rachel Connolly about her friendship with the painter Felix Higham
01.04.2025 17:48 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Wouldn’t you like to be normal? www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
10.05.2025 18:05 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
#booksky for #womenwriters 📚💙
A beautiful, wondrous & deeply thoughtful essay about Janet Frame, her key works and life; she was one of the most remarkable, accomplished memoirists (Angel at My Table), novelists, & story writers of the 20th century. By Lucie Elven, novelist.
archive.is/W65Zp
Thank you!
11.05.2025 17:42 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
‘Janet Frame’s writing is often compared to Faulkner’s, and her family history reads like a Southern Gothic novel. Yet Frame can be an extraordinarily cheerful, funny writer. Language was a source of continual revelation.’
@lucieelven.bsky.social on the novelist: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Before the second volume of her autobiography was even published, Janet Frame was being called a neglected genius, recommended for the Nobel Prize, awarded a CBE (she would have preferred to be styled Dame Frame, but “that’s my wack”).’
Lucie Elven on the novelist: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
‘Frame’s letters were opened by the doctors, who deemed them “foolish”. A line about gorse smelling of peanut butter was singled out as a sign of her disordered mind and reason enough to prevent contact with the outside world for a time.‘
Lucie Elven on Janet Frame: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Great review this
01.05.2025 20:18 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0Janet Frame was just days away from a scheduled lobotomy when her first story collection won a New Zealand national literary award, convincing her doctors to cancel the procedure.
02.05.2025 20:23 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
‘Frame’s letters were opened by the doctors, who deemed them “foolish”. A line about gorse smelling of peanut butter was singled out as a sign of her disordered mind and reason enough to prevent contact with the outside world for a time.‘
Lucie Elven on Janet Frame: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Issue 47.08 is now online, featuring:
Alan Hollinghurst on 1950s gay London
Anne Enright @thewrengirl.bsky.social on Helen Garner
Julian Barnes on the collector Albert Barnes
Andrew O’Hagan on hologram concerts
Lucie Elven on Janet Frame
and a cover by Naomi Frears.
Read online at www.lrb.co.uk
‘Before the second volume of her autobiography was even published, Janet Frame was being called a neglected genius, recommended for the Nobel Prize, awarded a CBE (she would have preferred to be styled Dame Frame, but “that’s my wack”).’
Lucie Elven on the novelist: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
❤️ Janet Frame
06.05.2025 21:04 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
