"Those looking for poetic diction will be thinly sated... What there is instead is a relentless exercise in auto-therapy, working through, stumbling on the occasional breakthrough." Stuart Walton on Joe Carrick-Varty's BEFORE VIOLENCE (@carcanet.bsky.social) review31.co.uk/article/view...

"Halfon’s descriptive, collative method allows her to remain slightly askance of Gombrowicz, sketching out his contradictions without ever flattening them." Simon Firth on Mercedes Halfon's OUTSIDER EVERYWHERE (@fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social) review31.co.uk/article/view...

"Those looking for poetic diction will be thinly sated... What there is instead is a relentless exercise in auto-therapy, working through, stumbling on the occasional breakthrough." Stuart Walton on Joe Carrick-Varty's BEFORE VIOLENCE (@carcanet.bsky.social) review31.co.uk/article/view...

"Halfon’s descriptive, collative method allows her to remain slightly askance of Gombrowicz, sketching out his contradictions without ever flattening them." Simon Firth on Mercedes Halfon's OUTSIDER EVERYWHERE (@fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social) review31.co.uk/article/view...

"An eloquent, humane work of criticism, which displays Vendler's typical sensitivity to what Wordsworth called the ‘turnings intricate of verse.’" Bret van den Brink on Helen Vendler's Inhabit the Poem review31.co.uk/article/view...

"At his best, Lerner combines fiction & criticism to postulate both a novel vision of the social possibilities of art & the artistic possibilities of socialising." Nick Bartlett on Ben Lerner's Transcription review31.co.uk/article/view...

"The Palm House is a funny book. Part of me wants to write blackly funny; darkly funny — but in truth, it’s the humour that operates the levers of complexity." @marrrtha.bsky.social on Gwendoline Riley's The Palm House review31.co.uk/article/view...

Here’s my take on Cory Doctorow’s #enshittification published by @versobooks.bsky.social for @review31.bsky.social (give them a follow)— it’s funny, depressing but ultimately it’s a useful resource for working out why so many platforms increasingly offer up awful UX. review31.co.uk/article/view...

“Cooper’s novels remind us that an artistic life is all about practice, a way of living: observation, questions, uncertainty.” In @review31.bsky.social‬‬, Thomas Chadwick reviews Jeremy Cooper’s new novel, “Discord” - review31.co.uk/article/view...

The Plains, by Federico Falco and translated by Jennifer Croft, is a "moving and beautifully made novel". Thank you @review31.bsky.social! review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...

I spent some time with last year's Nightjar Press chapbooks and ended up writing about creepy birds and the contemporary gothic. Review 31 kindly took it on. Free to read here: review31.co.uk/essay/view/1... @review31.bsky.social @nightjarpress.bsky.social

"The letters convey a picture of two writers in alternating states of vitality & decline, pushing against the threat of both illness & obscurity." Rachel Dastgir on LETTERS TO EUGENE review31.co.uk/article/view...

"Dog Days is a work that contends with the difficulty of committing words to a page, & letting them stay there." Julia Merican on Emily LaBarge's DOG DAYS review31.co.uk/article/view...

My pick for @review31.bsky.social's Books of the Year 2025 is Alex Pheby's Waterblack, the third volume in the Cities of the Weft trilogy. Superb, strange fantasy that has reinvigorated the genre. @alexpheby.bsky.social @galleybeggars.bsky.social review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...

A pleasure to contribute to this connoisseurs' list of books of the year for @review31.bsky.social review31.co.uk/essay/view/1... I chose Old Kiln by Jia Pingwa, translated by James Trapp, Olivia Milburn and Christopher Payne, published by @sinoistbooks.bsky.social

That time of year again, and here's my off-trail Book of the Year choice.

Review 31's Books of the Year 2025 review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...

"Pester has a precise ear for the frictionless formulations of contemporary organisational life that promise progress while pointing at nothing. These empty signifiers become a source of dread rather than comedy." Robert Kiely on THE EXPANSION PROJECT review31.co.uk/article/view...

"The internet is cooked. What began as a genuinely participatory medium ... has since become an extractive device, mining human creativity for corporate profit." Christopher Webb on Joanna Walsh's AMATEURS! review31.co.uk/article/view...

Thrilled to share this lovely review of my book @review31.bsky.social

"It’s in the precarious middle zone between personal rage & systemic failure that disaster nationalism mutates." Tymek Woodham on Richard Seymour's Disaster Nationalism review31.co.uk/article/view...

"The result is a book that emerges as of a spell: of preservation, but also a conjuring of memories that have been lost or deliberately forgotten." Jemima Skala on Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day, House of Night review31.co.uk/article/view...

hello Bluesky I wrote an article about the French author, photographer, and conceptual artist Édouard Levé, who wrote a book called “Suicide” and then immediately killed himself review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...

“The result is a book that emerges as of a spell: of preservation, but also a conjuring of memories that have been lost or deliberately forgotten.” In @review31.bsky.social‬‬, Jemima Skala reviews Olga Tokarczuk’s newly translated novel, “House of Day, House of Night” review31.co.uk/article/view...

Very grateful to Hugh Foley and @review31.bsky.social for this thoughtful and perceptive review of Poor Ghost!

"Little Pink Book doesn’t just perform dandyism; it participates in what Fredric Jameson famously called pastiche: a ‘blank parody’ that imitates style without satirical intent or critical edge." Elena Basada on Olivia Kan-Sperling's LITTLE PINK BOOK review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...

“‘Cautery’ follows two women, one real and one imagined, one left unnamed and one semi-forgotten to history.” In @review31.bsky.social‬, Bronwyn Scott-McCharen reviews Lucía Lijtmaer’s newly translated novel, “Cautery” - review31.co.uk/article/view...

“The object of fixation becomes an instrument for self-flagellation, rather than a breathing person to know and to love.” In @review31.bsky.social‬‬, Brynn Valentine reviews Harriet Armstrong’s debut novel, “To Rest Our Minds and Bodies” - review31.co.uk/article/view...

"Tham's simple call is radical: sex is more than 'just sex', for it is social and socially 'spoken'." Gabrielle Sicam on Revolutionary Desires review31.co.uk/article/view...

"The old guard of self-consciously male writers would have found only the comic, the satirical even, in such a colossus of inarticulacy as Istvan; what Szalay finds, however, is something universal." @cosmoadair.bsky.social on David Szalay's FLESH tinyurl.com/mpfcu74r

"What does it mean to write for the future when the possibility of any future at all is thrown radically into doubt?" Jon Repetti on two Attilas bit.ly/4i0hYNP

"What does it mean to write for the future when the possibility of any future at all is thrown radically into doubt?" Jon Repetti on two Attilas bit.ly/4i0hYNP

Great to see the institution that is Review 31 on Bluesky!

"Self-knowledge alone simply isn’t going to cut it; to really understand the way ‘anger drives the world’, one must look beyond the heuristic of the individual." Tymek Woodham on Josh Cohen's All the Rage: Why Anger Drives the World (@grantamag.bsky.social) review31.co.uk/article/view...

"Sophistry & syllogisms paint all anti-war protesters as antisemitic terrorist sympathisers. These are hackneyed but maddeningly effective strategies..." @tadhghoey.bsky.social on Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...

And lo: here we are, on Bluesky. Pls repost to spread the word!

"Childishness & adult language-use are persistently, & with vicious irony, switching scales: ‘pointing it up while scaling it down.’ This can induce wild laughter, but also unbearable gravity." @jackbarron93.bsky.social on the poetry of J.H. Prynne review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...

"Few Anglophone film critics of the last 50 years have been as humble, curious or open-minded as Jonathan Rosenbaum." Sam Warren Miell reviews In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: A Jonathan Rosenbaum Reader review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...

"A gap is emerging between poet & audience, one wrought by increasing professionalisation & the competition for tax-funded prize money which incentivises stylistic experimentation." Joshua Abbey on Ryan Ruby's Context Collapse review31.co.uk/article/view...

“The English soul is characterised, for Ackroyd, by a particular combination of intense spiritual mysticism & pragmatic flexibility in the realm of doctrine.” Archie Cornish on Peter Ackroyd’’s The English Soul review31.co.uk/article/view...

review31.co.uk/essay/view/1... my review of J. H. Prynne's latest