Malin Hay is an editor at the LRB.
Jane DeLynn last published a novel in 2002, when she was 56, but Semiotext(e) in the US and Divided in the UK have now reissued In Thrall (1982), her most personal work and, according to Colm Tóibín’s new introduction, ‘her masterpiece’. It’s set in the mid-1960s at a girls’ high school in Manhattan. Lynn, DeLynn’s narrator/alter ego, looks...
There’s an old joke. ‘A man was choking to death in a restaurant and Barbra Streisand was sitting at the next table. She rushed over and did the Heimlich manoeuvre and saved his life. Next day the headline read: Barbra Streisand Takes the Food Right Out of a Person’s Mouth.’ Streisand repeats the joke in her autobiography, My Name Is Barbra, to explain why she felt a...
In the post-marriage era, what happens to the marriage plot? The marriage rate halved between 1991 and 2019, but fiction can’t shake its fondness for the will they/won’t they question, for love triangles and dilemmas. In her second novel, Naoise Dolan updates the form for the 21st century, recognising that for the perpetual teenagers of the 2020s, a wedding is just an arbitrary...
At the end of the 20th century, Mills and Boon changed its look. The genteel bodice-unlacers of the 1950s, hardbacks with titles like Inherit My Heart and Journey to Love, gave way in the 1970s to colourful paperbacks sporting a painting of a busty blonde and her hulking Burt Lancaster. Then, as their contents turned towards erotica, the covers became more upfront. Categories were...
Since 1995, at least 51 young people have died in Scottish prisons. These include Katie Allan and William Lindsay, who shared strong support networks and, despite very different life experiences, died...
The Norwegian novelist Vigdis Hjorth is a master of the collapsing relationship. In her twenty books, she turns her eye to estranged siblings, tormented lovers, demanding parents and disaffected colleagues...
Singing, acting, directing, writing: Barbra Streisand always insisted on doing it her way. Malin Hay, who recently reviewed Streisand’s 992-page autobiography, joins Tom to discuss her performances on...
In his introduction to our twelfth LRB Collection, Sisters Come Second, Colm Tóibín writes that most siblings dream of being only children. Malin Hay explores this idea with Colm and Andrew O’Hagan,...
Michael Wood talks to Malin Hay about the recent list from Sight and Sound of the ‘greatest films of all time’ (in which he voted), and what considerations could, or should, go into compiling such...
With the future of TikTok increasingly uncertain in the US and other countries, Malin Hay talks to Tom about the app’s powerful reading-focused corner, BookTok: what it is, how it works, and the tropes...
Bee Wilson speaks to Malin Hay about Paul Newman’s mystique – his passivity, his domesticity and his irresistible blue eyes.
Jane Stanford, the co-founder of Stanford University, was murdered with strychnine in 1905. Her killer was never discovered – until now (perhaps). James Lasdun talks to Malin Hay about a new book by...
Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.
For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.