Simon Demetriou

By Simon Demetriou There are so many situations where jargon can be off-putting. Thankfully, thriller novels about military intelligence are not one of these. Indeed, you want your novelist to ...

Xenobe Purvis’ timely and exquisite little debut manages to deftly carry off its titular pun: this is a novel about five sisters who, it is claimed, turn into dogs – a ...

If one can believe the OED – and I refuse to countenance a world where this is not a given – then the frequency with which the word ‘autofiction’ crops up in ...

I like books that are funny. I like books that treat flawed characters tenderly. I like books about parents and children. I like books about human absurdity and folly. I ...

There is a line midway through Vera, or Faith, when the novel’s eponymous protagonist reflects that her family situation has become ‘worse than the time Daddy had gotten into ...

In a recent review, I talked about how fictional secrets ought, if possible, to be kept rationally and meaningfully, but that often this isn’t the case. The ‘but’ you ...

By Simon Demetriou Ideally, I would sit down to write a review the day after I finished reading a book, having had time to ruminate and plan, and for impressions ...

Secrets in stories, whether on page or screen, are tricky things. Everyone knows that in real life, people keep secrets irrationally, not to say stupidly, and that’s just how ...

It takes some guts to write a novel in which your narrator and central character is a comedian, for the simple reason that to pull the character off, you need ...

‘You weren’t supposed to suddenly get a new family at eleven o’clock on a Saturday after you’d sold out of eggs.’ So much of Kevin Wilson’s ...

Of the many ways in which I unintentionally broadcast my lack of coolness to the world, the one we’ll talk about this week is my blind and rabid excitement ...

There are a lot of people who, typically as a result of their own ignorance, tend to dismiss philosophy as navel-gazing solipsism. The immediately flippant counter to these people is ...

George Eliot describes marriage as both a ‘bourne’ and ‘a great beginning’ at the end of Middlemarch, in which we see examples of marriages as both endings and beginnings. Kate ...

‘What would you write if you had to write your obituary? Today, right now.’ Avid readers of this column (I’ve always wanted to write this, but don’t worry; ...

First impressions matter, which is why you really can’t trust anyone who tells you never to judge a book by its cover (these people will have made a lot ...

It is so clearly understood as to be barely worth saying that parenthood changes your life. And yet, every truism needs to be true, and every truth can be profoundly ...

There’s a moment in Gliff where its narrator, a child named Briar, reflects upon reading a dictionary that ‘there was such a thing as a family of words… all ...

I like romantic comedies. I like crime fiction. I like novels that expose the misogyny and gender imbalances that still run through western ‘developed’ societies. And I like anything that ...

Another debut novel by a successful poet, and another opportunity to repeat my now truistic standpoint that one really can’t go wrong in turning the opening page by one ...

The 2024-25 academic year marks the fourth edition of The Heritage New Writing Contest, a national creative writing competition run by The Heritage Private School, looking to find, celebrate and ...

‘They said she was wayward. They said it was all her fault. They said she had done something wrong. They lied.’ The plural forces of a misogynistic system lined up ...

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 ...