Review by Kathleen Bell of "The Iliad" by Homer, trans. Emily Wilson

Some months ago, when I was half-way through Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Iliad, I had to set it aside. This is not a criticism of her work but a tribute to its effectiveness. The accumulated violence and grief appalled me as it had never done before. I was sharply aware of the individuality of so many dying men, of the agony they suffered and the anguish their families would endure. I might attribute this in part to the accumulation of contemporary violence brought to our daily attention via TV, computers and smartphones, but I do not believe any previous translation would have had the immediacy that Wilson’s iambic pentameters offer.

When I first read Homer, it was in E.V . Rieu’s prose translation published by Penguin – a decent and accessible enough account. But I was not particularly moved by his account of the prince Asius, whose death is one of many recorded in Book 12: "He was a fool. He was not destined to evade his evil fate and drive back his chariot and pair in triumph from the ships to windy Ilium. In the spear of the sublime Idomeneus, Deucalion’s son, abominable doom was waiting to engulf him."

By contrast, Wilson offers: 

           Poor fool! He was not destined to escape
           his own black doom or ever leave the ships
           or ride back home again to windy Troy,
           proud of his horses and his chariot.
           The spear of splendid Idomeneus,
           Deucalion’s fine son, would bring him down
           and shadow him with death that dims men’s names.

The combination of the metre with clear language drew me far closer to the battle than Rieu managed. Through instances like this – and often more painful and much gorier – Homer takes us close to the details of war. Meanwhile the warriors exult in killing, crave loot as proof of merit, and long for a victory which will involve massacre, wholesale destruction and the enslavement of those few allowed to survive.

At times, as when the gods decide to involve themselves in battle or quarrel over the conduct of the war, The Iliad can seem very distant from our own time – until suddenly a river which is also a god enters the battle and becomes a great flood with effects familiar from reports of current ecological disasters. Meanwhile the macho boasting and posturing of the warriors who often take women as trophies has uncomfortable echoes today. Yet there are moments when a warrior might recognise and almost understand the horror in which he is involved, In Book 18, mourning the death of the man he loves most, Achilles says to his mother:

           If only conflict were eliminated
           from gods and human beings! I wish anger
           did not exist. Even the wisest people
           are roused to rage, which trickles into you
           sweeter than honey, and inside your body
           it swells like smoke …

Inevitably in a translation this long – the book with introduction and notes runs to 750 pages – there are occasional phrases and words which jar slightly. However, I have never read a translation of The Iliad that gripped and moved me so much. I was also delighted by the insights offered in Emily Wilson’s introduction and wished I had found something as clear and illuminating as this when, as an undergraduate, I studied Book 1 of the Iliad for one of my first-year exams.

About the reviewer
Kathleen Bell’s most recent poetry collections are the chapbook Do you know how kind I am? from Leafe Press and the collection Disappearances published by Shoestring (both 2021). She is currently preparing a manuscript that might be another collection while continuing to research and write poems about the engineer James Watt and his times. 

Review by Mike O'Driscoll of "The Study of Sleep and Other Stories" by Brian Howell

What a pleasant surprise to find that Brian Howell is still writing and publishing fiction. I first came across him years ago in UK literary journal Panurge, and he had at least one story in The 3rd Alternative. We both appeared in Nicholas Royle’s two-volume anthology Darklands, as well as in a best of Elastic Press anthology. That story, ‘The Tower,’ was the last time I encountered his fiction. His latest collection is a timely reminder of just how unique and obsessive—in a good way—a writer he is.

The title story, a novella, is the intricate and elliptical four-part portrait of Martin, a performance artist and aspiring writer, told from the perspective of Philip, a childhood friend, Martin himself, and Lenka, the latter’s former wife, but filtered through the narrative perspective of Julie, Philip’s wife, and herself possibly a former lover of Martin’s. The competing stories, as in Kurosawa’s film, Rashomon, both overlap and contradict each other, so that our take on Martin remains ephemeral and incomplete. This is the case even in his own narrative, where seven photographs of his abused lover, Chiara, at different stages of her life, also seem to offer an oblique commentary on his previous relationship with Lenka, which story unfolds in the novel’s third section, ‘The Decay,’ and which is itself Julie’s written interpretation of their marriage. In other hands, such intertextuality might appear an exercise in cold formalism, but Howell never loses sight of his characters, and in particular of their foibles. It’s the desire to learn the truth behind their yearnings and vanities that keeps us enthralled.

The intertextual play between the The Study of Sleep’s four parts is echoed in the remaining five tales, all of which, in their preoccupation with visual art—in particular the paintings of Vermeer, but also with cinema and the means of visual representation—seem to be engaged in a dialogue with each other. Some of them, particularly ‘The Vanishing Point,’ share the same unsettling mood as Martin’s self narrated tale in the title novella, and like it, lean more toward the macabre. Others—‘The Window’ and ‘New York Movie’—explore the extent to which art suffuses memory, how what we remember of specific works not only colours our memories, but shapes the narratives we create about our own lives. The final story, ‘The Counterfeit Smile,’ tells of Vermeer’s life, and of his search for the elusive face that has haunted him throughout his life, and of how it came to appear in one of his most famous works, ‘The Music Lesson.’ Not only is the story full of fascinating technical and biographical detail, but it offers a powerful and heartfelt representation of the artist’s motivations and desires. Just as Marquand, the protagonist of ‘Dutch Interior,’ finds himself falling into the rooms depicted in a mysterious viewing box, Howell’s elegant prose pulls us deep into the worlds of his characters and their obsessions.

About the reviewer
Mike O’Driscoll is a writer living in Swansea. His work has appeared in Black Static, Interzone, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous anthologies. His story ‘Sounds Like’ was adapted for a TV movie by Brad Anderson, as part of the Masters of Horror series. Mike blogs on different aspects of genre writing and film here.

Review by Sally Shaw of "A Physical Education" by Jonathan Taylor

A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons is a book of memoir, interwoven with literary, film, drama and social sciences, by Jonathan Taylor, published in 2024 by Goldsmiths Press. 

When I started reading this book I wasn’t sure what to expect or even if I would be able to fully understand what Jonathan Taylor is discussing. As I read on and paused to consider what had been written I discovered how literature has tried to record or unveil bullying, how it has the power to aid individuals that are being bullied, and also Taylor’s skill in his examination of this subject. His writing enabled me to consider the many forms and complexities of bullying and bullies. Taylor’s bravery in sharing his at times harrowing experiences of being bullied will, I’m sure, enable others to identify bullying either of themselves or others and, in doing so, reduce it in educational and work settings, or deal with it. 

By providing literary examples, the book exposes, in a non-threatening way, the many different forms of bullying within education. For example, Taylor discusses the example of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, in relation to issues of classroom democracy, after he has been beaten down by the other children for standing up for the rights of a character in a drama the class are watching: "The problem, of course, with apparently individualistic behaviour is that it doesn’t come from nowhere. Individualism is never simply itself. Rather, it is made - and often made for, rather than by - the pupil or pupils at the centre of it. In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the so-called individualism of the 'Brodie set' is obviously made, in part, by Miss Brodie herself, forged by her 'as the leader of the set … as Roman matron.' 'I am putting old heads on your young shoulders,' she declares, when her favourites are eleven. 'I would make you the crème de la crème.' Later, she proclaims: 'You are mine … of my stamp and cut.' Miss Brodie’s stamp and cut are what 'set them apart' from the other pupils, and ultimately, 'it was impossible to escape from the Brodie set because they were the Brodie set in the eyes of the school.' This puts them in an 'enviable’ position,' such that 'everyone thought the Brodie set had more fun than anyone else.' All too often, though, being set apart in 'the eyes of the school' is much less fun, more a matter of ostracism than envy." I think that most people can relate to a drama, novel or film and for me this book has made me aware that it is a legitimate form of support for people affected by bullying.

I can only say what I discovered by reading this book. One thing is that it can sometimes take years to realise bullying has been, or is, taking place. Reading this book I did think about my past and present. I knew I was bullied by teachers, work colleagues, and I have also started to uncover bullying from individuals close to me. And I have found the book contains further reading to enable me to explore this in greater depth. In fact, as I read on, I started to acknowledge that I think I could have been a bully at times in my earlier life, but I’m unable to recall the details. Taylor examines how the bullied have the potential to become the bully. I happened to watch the film The Joker (2019), starring Joaquin Phoenix, an extremely dark and disturbing film, that to me demonstrated a possible consequence of when the bullied become the bully. As Taylor discusses, the very term "bullying" is almost impossible to define, as it can range from teasing to domestic abuse and more. 

This book is worth reading by everybody as it is relatable to all areas of society and may lead to readers identifying bullying, so enabling greater awareness and understanding. There may not be one single method of stamping out bullying, but this book shows that greater understanding can reduce the risks for future generations. The more we can talk about it, reduce the shame, the more people will be helped.  

About the reviewer
Sally has an MA Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. She gains inspiration from old photographs, history, childhood memories, and is inspired by writers Sandra Cisneros, Deborah Morgan, Liz Berry and Emily Dickinson. She has short stories and poetry published in various online publications including The Ink Pantry, AnotherNorth, Roi Faineant Press. 
Sally lives in the countryside. 

You can read more about A Physical Education on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by James Nash of "Remembering" by Julie Gardner

This is a tender and moving collection celebrating and memorialising two lives, the poet’s mother and her own husband, but succeeding, as all good poetry does, in finding universal truths about our common humanity and shared experience of loss.

Deftly constructing a history for her mother who died at forty-seven, and recording the emptiness after her husband’s death, these are quiet but truthful poems that bind us into the ordinary, but somehow extraordinary, emotional textures of human lives, and show us how we survive in the aftermath of tragedy.

This is from ‘Moving On’:

          After the van had gone
          I mopped the kitchen floor
          then went upstairs, stood awhile,
          as empty as the house itself.

Julie Gardener is a fine poet, content to let her readers ‘join up the dots’ if you like, but also happy to acknowledge the influence of other poets like Grace Nichols and Jacob Polley. She is playful in terms of form in ‘Rondo,’ riffing on nursery rhyme (a motif which appears in several of these poems), but ultimately what we have in this fine collection is a poet using simple and gracefully chosen words to explore the territory of memory and grief. The almost Wordsworthian reliance on everyday language gives these poems an emotional reach and power that is refreshing and unusual.

This is from ‘For Arthur’:

          Widow sounds so sad and slow
          and I am neither, though I will
          forever wish you here.

The photograph on the front cover of the poet’s mother is blurred; the poems inside reclaim the misty lives of those who have gone before, mother and husband, and prove again and again that art can construct great memorials. The gift of this brilliant collection is that it allows us to connect to our own loss and mourning, our own ‘remembering’ if you like.

About the reviewer
James Nash is a poet based in Leeds. He often writes in the sonnet form and his next collection, Notes of Your Music, will be published by Valley Press.

Review by Tracey Foster of "The Gallows Pole" by Benjamin Myers

Much has been written about the pros and cons of using slang in fiction. It's a difficult act to pull off, if your audience cannot understand or interpret the meaning behind the text. I had also heard about the strange phenomenon of how the brain can interpret written phrases even when the key vowels are removed, an exercise that is fun to do, but not something I would attempt to do in fiction. These doubts were in my mind as I started Myers's book The Gallows Pole. His protagonist and narrator speaks directly to us in Yorkshire dialect, written as heard and without punctuation. The first few words were hard to transcribe, but then it was like a lightbulb had gone on and I could suddenly, fluently read the strange words: "In the fyres of the forges in the Black Cuntry was where I first herd tell of coinin where I learnit a little bout chippin and clippin swimmers where I learnit bout the yeller trade and the work of them men that darest do."

Myers delves into the true history of the Cragg Vale Coiners, led by David Hartley, a notorious rebel who enlisted a gang of weavers and land workers to clip coins and defraud the Crown. An offence punishable by death, they worked in secret and avoided detection because of their remote settings in the Yorkshire hills. Using historical facts and court transcripts he weaves a narrative about a group that unleashes a reign of menace onto the local communities, who are caught up in their practices. The events that lead up to the capture and resultant hanging of the gang leaders is fast paced and gripping and involves a cat-and-mouse chase with an excise man and the law.

Dark and gritty, Myers's novel uses a wealth of guttural language to convey the destitution and desperation that led to the necessity for an illegal trade. Clipping real coins and shaving off small particles, they would melt down and repress the metal to create forgeries, passing them off in trade within the local communities: "The night came in like a bruise of purple and blues and then finally griped so tight that the sky was black and broken by the weight of time pressing upon it. Dawn would melt the night in fading yellows but for now the sun seemed like an impossibility; a dead concept. A foreign country."

Myers's skill for evoking place with pathos and descriptions of the dark vales led him to be awarded the Roger Deakin Prize in 2017 for writing about "natural history, landscape and environment." It also secured the Walter Scott prize in 2018, leading to a TV adaptation by the director Shane Meadows. Critics described the book as "a roaring furnace of a novel." The author's childhood in suburb of Durham was uneventful but allowed him the freedom to explore and, as he described, he "spent a lot of time climbing up trees or trespassing on roofs." This familiarity with nature seeps through the novel as his excise man roams the valleys in the dark, catching whispers from taverns and firelight from hidden forges. He keeps his narrative in tune with the earth, that eventually gives up its secrets: "Autumn arrived like a burning ghost ship on the landscape’s tide to set the land alight. The fires of the trees’ turning spread far across the flanks and the ravens took flight to the highest climes as leaves fell like flung bodies. September had long slipped away. It was a charred thing now. Gone."

Myers is no stranger to beautiful prose: his poetry collection Heathcliff Adrift from 2014 also used the moors to ground human emotions, allowing them to resonate with our earthy instincts:

To the sky

we ran
and fell
the heather our mattress
the worms our witness –

young lungs burning.
Wet-backed,
soil soaked
mulch-coddled, copper puddled.
Dirt giggled and dizzy.

Fists of earth
raised, thrown –
fecund confetti
for a future union.
The rustling of life.

Several passages of The Gallows Pole could also be read like poetry, finding a turn of phrase to turn the ear. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction but also relishes beautiful prose and is loath to sacrifice one to suit the other. Myers’s visceral novel pays due homage to the trope of dark novels from God’s own country. 

About the reviewer
Tracey Foster started off in a long career as an Art and Design teacher but wanted to refocus her creative energies into writing poetry and prose. After helping others find inspiration in the world around us, she took an MA course in Creative Writing at Leicester University and has not looked back. She finds inspiration in the past and the events that shape us. Previous work has been published by Comma Press, Ayaskala, Alternateroute, Fish Barrel Review, Haiku Foundation, Mausoleum Press, Bus Poetry Magazine, Wayward Literature, The Arts Council and she writes on her own blog site  The Small Sublime found here.

Review by Debasish Lahiri of "Endless Present: Selected Articles, Reviews and Dispatches, 2010-23" by Rory Waterman

Criticism, like poetry, cannot be written at arm’s length. At least not the best. The critic has to suffer the imperilment of the artist: enjoy a brief triumph, endure a trudge through morass. Not full of platitudes, yet not bereft of sympathy either, the critic must realise that the poet’s plod can become a flight at the turnpike of the next sentence, or a flight can slam into a ‘concrete’ end, just as easily. Rarely do critics keep the faith with poets, all the way. Nor do they often take a step back to roll their eyes and have a good laugh, about poetry and attempts at the ‘poetic.’ 

By contrast, Rory Waterman does take a step back, and he also keeps the faith. An accomplished and distinct voice in poetry himself, Waterman takes to criticism with the same honesty, courage and an eye for the original and powerful that characterises much of his own work. 

Endless Present is Waterman’s selection from fourteen years of engagement with the craft and art of poetry. One should consider the introduction to the collection as the sixty-eighth essay in it. It moors his art of reading and criticism in the vicissitude of his life, the vagaries of time, the lucky breaks and occasional epiphanies of growing up. Waterman shies away from being the omnipotent absence in his criticism. Rather, he puts himself right in harm’s way as a poet and reader while writing about the poetry of others. In a way his introduction chimes, uncannily, with the text of the eulogy delivered at his father’s funeral (later published in the PN Review). 

Waterman emerges as someone who is prepared to wrangle with his own choices and preferences, to be refreshingly not sure, and to let it all play out, in public, in his reviews and longer essays. An expanse of writing that has Philip Larkin and Daljit Nagra, the late 1950s and the second decade of the new millennium as its landmarks of space and time, Waterman’s collected criticism is endlessly present. It offers a view of where he sits (when critical writing about poetry has elsewhere become an anonymous exercise in intellectual generalisation) and writes words neither salaried, nor pensioned. 

About the reviewer
Debasish Lahiri is an internationally acclaimed poet. He has published eight collections of poetry, the most recent being Legion of Lost Letters (Black Spring Press, 2023). Lahiri is the recipient of the Prix du Merite, Naji Naaman Literary Prize 2019.

Review by Peter Raynard of "After the Rites and Sandwiches" by Kathy Pimlott

 

Kathy Pimlott’s heart-breaking pamphlet, After the Rites and Sandwiches, portrays the impact of her husband’s sudden death from falling down the stairs of their home. In the aftermath, the reaction and readjustment is immediate and ever-present.

In an early poem, "No shock advised," short, punchy lines put you under no illusion as to the enormity of the event.

          It’s cruel work
         To kneel down
         and hunch over
         a so-familiar body at the foot of the stairs

But even then, when the defibrillator says, "no shock advised" and it’s apparent that there is nothing to be done, "still the sweet mad hopeful brain insists it will be okay."

The pamphlet is both a portrayal of grief and biography of a marriage. Tears become the episodic outpouring of emotion, almost carrying the weight of a seizure: "It’s impossible to foretell what will provoke tears, the sort that well up and tip over while you hold onto the kitchen sink waiting for them to subside."

Grief is also full of surprises, one of which is guilt: 

         Forgive me, I’ve laughed,
         glided lightly round garden centres, sipped fizzy wine
         with friends, sorted out edge pieces of puzzles.

Grief may not have feathers, but it does have a long tail; for although her husband is gone his presence remains, in objects, memories, as well as his ashes, and knowing what to do with them. In "Death Admin I," "Your demise constitutes a quarter off council tax, removal of a vote you seldom cast." Then in "Death Admin II," when collecting his ashes, 

        It shouldn’t be a surprise, the weight, the quantity.
        Not knowing what to expect, I take a pink rucksack, 
        carry you again, all down Holborn on my back.

Pimlott beautifully crafts the poems, with a matter-of-factness laced with incisive metaphors, which detract from the possibility of being overly maudlin. 

There is also dark humour as she almost parodies self-help, in titles such as "How to be A Widow," "Death Admin I & II," and in the final poem, "Coda: Tips on avoiding the offered consolations of Religion and Therapy": "If it’s Religion, it’ll spot you, even when you’re crouched low behind the credenza," or: "Therapy requires acuter acting skills. Better pretend you’re a dog (a Dalmatian, the least intellectual)." Also in the poem, "What I do with you now you’re dead," Pimlott writes: "in a laughing panic, [I] dumped a quarter of your ashes and ran away, the illicit thrill exactly what you would have wanted."

After the Rites and Sandwiches is a stunning biography of a marriage and its aftershock, that will stay in the reader’s memory long after the book is laid to rest.

About the reviewer

Peter Raynard is an independent researcher, poet and editor of Proletarian Poetry. His three books of poetry are: Precarious (Smokestack, 2018), The Combination: a poetic coupling of the Communist Manifesto (Culture Matters,2018), Manland (Nine Arches Press, 2022). A debut pamphlet (a heroic crown of sonnets), The Harlot and the Rake: poems after William Hogarth, was published by Culture Matters in September 2024.

You can read more about After the Rites and Sandwiches by Kathy Pimlott on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Christine Hammond of "Citizen Poet" by Eavan Boland

Last week, Trinity College Dublin announced plans to re-name its main library after the highly acclaimed Irish poet, Eavan Boland. Consequently, it will be the first building on Trinity’s city centre campus to be named after a woman. This is a fitting tribute to a pioneer in literary feminism, whose relentless pursuit to revolutionise poetry would go on to provide countless opportunities for previously unheard women’s voices. 

This re-naming comes the month following publication of Citizen Poet (Carcanet). This collection of new and selected essays reveals the extraordinary commitment to writing Boland undertook over decades to argue the case about the artistic and cultural tradition of Irish poetry. Specifically, why it rendered women "the subject, rather than the object of the poem." Exposing the inherent bias and shortcomings of prior structures and formats, she showed how the literary culture, role and existence of poets, as well as the poetry itself, could not facilitate women who wanted to give expression to their everyday lives and experiences: "The Poet’s vocation – or, more precisely, the historical construction put upon it - is one of the single most problematic areas for any woman who comes to the craft. Not only has it been defined by a tradition  which could never foresee her, but it is construed by men about men, in ways which are poignant, compelling and exclusive" (from "In Search of a Language"). 

Boland writes: "I was still short of the exact words, the accurate perceptions. I still talked at night and listened with real excitement. And yet I was beginning to feel oddly stranded. Something was obstructing me, throwing me off course. I was between a poem – there, at home on the tablecloth – and the idea of the poet. I could control the poem, even though it was with half-learned and hand-to-mouth techniques. I could listen for, and understand, the idea of the poet I picked up at night in the conversations I heard around me, But the space between them filled me with an odd malaise. Something about it seemed almost to have the force of an exclusion order" (from "Turning Away"). It is almost impossible to equate with today’s Ireland the impenetrable landscape these compelling essays portray. We take for granted that women now have the intellectual freedom to write and publish poetry but for that, let us never forget the immeasurable debt of gratitude we owe to Eavan Boland.

About the reviewer 
Christine Hammond began writing poetry whilst studying English Literature at Queen’s University, Belfast. Her early poems were published in The Gown (QUB) and Women’s News where, as one of the original members she also wrote Arts Reviews and had work published in Spare Rib. She returned to writing after a long absence and her poetry has been featured in a variety of anthologies including The Poet’s Place and Movement (Poetry in Motion – The Community Arts Partnership), The Sea (Rebel Poetry Ireland), all four editions of Washing Windows and Her Other Language (Arlen House) and literary journal The Honest Ulsterman. She has also been a reader at Purely Poetry - Open Mic Night, Belfast.

Review by Geoff Sawers of "Pain Sections" by Paul Ilechko

Ilechko's first chapbook, Bartok in Winter (Flutter Press, 2018) was, as one might expect from the title, taut and spare with few words wasted; a book of clean lines and compressed, even drilled, language. Pain Sections is looser, more expansive – the larger paper format suiting the frequent use of very long lines – but continues the poet's searching investigation into the nature of the body as an unreliable medium, as both cage and vessel. A series of unspecified medical procedures are undergone; perhaps inevitably there is a yearning to escape at times, moments of panic, of surreal reverie, of frailty and fear. A poem that starts "A body drenched in joy / thicketed / and bruised / overwhelmed with pollen" ends with the lines "the iron-tasting leaves that still / eclipse / the lamp-lit room" ("Marrow of Purity"). If it was important for the reader to know the nature of these investigations, presumably we would have been told. But since that information is withheld it gives a weird, dislocated feel that I suspect is deliberate, since the very unreliability of the interfaces between mind and body seem to be the crucial site of much of the work's focus. Cancer is mentioned, but that appears itself to be a metaphor for something else.

At this point in the book there seems little escape: "and I wonder if / inside of each of us / there is only pulp / as inside each other / we liquefy ..." we read a few pages later ("Bruising"). The body is as tender as fruit; the natural world is a constant metaphor, with the erosion of coastlines mimicking the potential disintegration of a human body. But soon the possibilities of communication, especially in "Breath as Wave and Breath as Particle," begin to offer a way out of this stifling trap. At times we find what may be whispered lovers' dialogues, though the voices are unspecified and unsettling. Just as Bartok in Winter frequently switched voices within one poem, this book expands upon that technique and ends with a lengthy dialogue poem. If I have a real criticism to make it comes at this point as this fourteen-page dialogue, which seems to want and perhaps be able to resolve the tensions set up earlier in the book, is at times abstract or unfocussed. The most overused word – "leakage" – is still important however as it comes to emphasise the many unsoundnesses of the body. Even though this dialogue section contains memorable lines ("as light that flows through the cracks of our investment / I sold my waters for profit / I sold my light for kicks") it slips at one or two moments into bathos and could do with further careful editing.

Nevertheless, Ilechko's unflinching attention to detail is at times startling; little curls of the romantic or lyrical never distract from his serious purpose. Small touches of very dark humour come through too at times. Looking back once more at his earlier book the themes were all there, but the language was archer, more stylised. References to various artists – Ryman, Borges, Hopper – seemed unnecessary when, in the latter two cases at least, their influence was quite plain to see. In Pain Sections, Ilechko's voice is much more assured, biting without being sarcastic, and unafraid to tackle the most difficult of themes.

About the reviewer

Geoff Sawers (he, him) is the author of several books including a collection of linked short stories, Friends of Friends (Diehard, 2024). He is a lone parent of a disabled child and lives in Reading, UK. You can read a review of Friends of Friends on Everybody's Reviewing here.