California Literary Review

Web Site:

http://quiteirregular.wordpress.com/

Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• Television Review: Page Eight on PBS
  Posted on 06 Nov 2011 in Espionage, Mystery, Television, The Fourth Wall
  

  British spies these days – the most interesting ones at any rate – are weary, compromised and full of a guilty nostalgia for the quiet savagery of the Cold War. Spy fiction is a way of thinking about British decline, the long loss of faith and loss of face that the last century brought from Suez onwards.

• Book Review: Jane Austen: Blood Persuasion by Janet Mullany
  Posted on 03 Oct 2011 in Books, Fiction Reviews, Literary Themes, Writers
  

  At root, the novel seems to rest on a misapprehension: that the world of Jane Austen would be more exciting if it had vampires in it. During it, we discover that in the first draft of Mansfield Park, Fanny was, in fact, one of said bloodthirsty beasties. Did anyone ever read Mansfield Park and think “Not bad, but it could do with more of the undead”?

• The Woman in White, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford
  Posted on 25 Aug 2011 in Blog-Theater, Theatre
  

  Collins’ strong suit is suspense tinged with bafflement. When it works, you’re reeling from the last twist in the plot, and wondering where it’ll go next. When it doesn’t, you’re still trying to work out whose will has just been overturned by the return of the mysterious stranger who looks exactly like the missing heiress whose marriage records…and so the next twist is rather a moot point.

• The Turn of the Screw at Glyndebourne, Live Streamed via The Guardian
  Posted on 22 Aug 2011 in Blog-Theater, Music, Opera, Theatre
  

  Glyndebourne: one of the names in the British calendar. Up there with Wimbledon, Henley and other occasions which involve large quantities of strawberries being consumed in extremely specific clothing. With the added attraction of some of the best opera in the world.

• Anne Boleyn, at Shakespeare’s Globe, London
  Posted on 22 Aug 2011 in Blog-Theater, Theatre
  

  Despite the subject matter, and the evident success of the play, the particular style of performance the Globe encourages seemed to throw the play off kilter a few times. There was too much “playing at naughtiness”, an easy iconoclasm feeding off the sense that jokes about sex are risky and daring in a play about the Renaissance in Shakespeare’s “own” theatre.

• Butley, at the Duchess Theatre, London
  Posted on 19 Aug 2011 in Blog-Theater, Theatre
  

  Where West’s incarnation as Detective McNulty was part of a sprawling, panoramic vision of a social and political system in crisis, Butley hones in on one man frenetically working his own destruction in an academic office. Gestures are made towards student radicalism and changing mores, but Butley’s existential battle is conducted on viciously hand-to-hand terms.

• The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre, London
  Posted on 18 Aug 2011 in Blog-Theater, Espionage, Great Britain, Theatre
  

  The fact that it can now boast of being the longest-running comedy currently in the West End suggests that it taps pretty successfully into a tradition as firmly British as Hannay himself: a need to mock the idea of hearty “Britishness”, even as we celebrate it at one remove.

• Book Review: The Craigslist Murders by Brenda Cullerton
  Posted on 26 Jul 2011 in Books, Crime Fiction, Fiction Reviews, Humor, Mystery, Satire, Thrillers
  

  An interior “desecrator” who despises the bored super-rich housewives who can afford her services, she lives amongst people for whom money has dissolved away the real world, and takes her revenge by smashing their heads in with the poker which she carries wrapped in a yoga mat.

• Book Review: Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones
  Posted on 05 Jul 2011 in Books, Economics, Great Britain, Non-Fiction Reviews, Politics, Sociology
  

  But wherever it originated, the word conjures up an instant picture of young people in cheap sportswear, swigging alcopops, brandishing knives and selling each other drugs whilst getting their fifteen-year-old girlfriends pregnant. They are a favourite subject for the right-wing tabloids, and where the term “chav” is found, the words “feral”, “benefits” and “underclass” will often be somewhere in the vicinity, not to mention “lifestyles funded by your taxes!”

• Theatre Review: Frankenstein at the National Theatre, London
  Posted on 08 Mar 2011 in Performing Arts, Theatre
  

  There are some terrific “There’s something in the sack!” or “What’s that climbing down the wall?” moments, and Danny Boyle really knows how to deploy a flash of lightning. Steering clear of too much mad-scientist “It livessss!” stuff allows him to direct this part of the show with the kind of punch which movie-goers will remember from his film Shallow Grave.

• Opera Review: Anna Nicole at the Royal Opera House, London
  Posted on 24 Feb 2011 in Music, Opera, Performing Arts, Theatre
  

  Anna Nicole zipped herself up in a bodybag, surrounded by a crowd of camera-headed creatures which had been stalking her all the way through the second act, peering at her and sorting through piles of rubbish on the stage. The sudden blackout at the end produced a pause, then elated applause.

• Book Review: Heartstone: A Matthew Shardlake Tudor Mystery by C.J. Sansom
  Posted on 27 Jan 2011 in Fiction Reviews, Great Britain, Historical Fiction
  

  Matthew Shardlake the lawyer and his friend Dr. Guy Malton represent the arrival of the professional classes. Landless but educated, open-minded, progressive and paid by the case, they bear a striking resemblance to the heroes of many modern thrillers.

• Book Review: Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell
  Posted on 21 Dec 2010 in Fiction Reviews, Mystery, Thrillers
  

  Whatever her faults, you can’t criticise Patricia Cornwell for sticking in a rut. Port Mortuary, her latest novel about the forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta, uses a new narrative device to explore fresh plot territory. But the resulting book is exceptionally difficult to like.

• Theatre Review: Blood and Gifts at the National Theatre, London
  Posted on 21 Sep 2010 in Performing Arts, Theatre
  

  Pop music functions as a metonym for the cultural appropriations and misunderstandings which occur onstage. Is an intelligence asset who can be bought with Tina Turner records a hopeless simpleton, or simply asking for payment in the currency which will gain him most prestige amongst his fighters? Does a song’s meaning belong to the pampered stadium rockers who recorded it, or the man who died on the “dark desert highway” it describes? And did The Eagles accidentally write an epitaph for the various nations who have tried to conquer Afghanistan over the last few centuries?

• Book Review: The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
  Posted on 08 Jul 2010 in Fiction Reviews, Religion
  

  The premise of Philip Pullman’s new book is brilliant. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ offers us a version of the gospel narratives in which not one, but two boys were born to Mary. Jesus grew up to be a millenarian preacher, who prophesied the coming of the Kingdom of God, whilst his brother Christ skulked around in the background, recording and (more often) distorting his brother’s words for posterity.