John Baker’s Blog

Danuta Keen in The Independent interviews Karin Slaughter. The subject is extreme violence:
Two years ago I interviewed Ian Rankin for this newspaper. In the middle of a wide-ranging discussion he said something he may have since come to regret. “The people writing the most graphic violence today are women,” he told me, then continued, “They [...]

It is mooted from time to time that place in fiction can be seen as a character acting within the movement of the narrative. One thinks of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County or of EM Forster’s Marabar Caves. Classically there are the examples of Mrs Gaskell’s Cranford, of Joyce’s Dublin and Conan Doyle’s London, while closer to [...]