Luke Kennard teaches at the University of Birmingham. His most recent books are Cain, a collection of poetry, and The Transition, a novel.
Andrew Martin’s Early Work functions simultaneously as a celebratory autofiction about literary life in the United States and an indictment of the generation that populates it. ‘Most of the people I associated with considered themselves exceptional,’ says Pete, the protagonist, and we may take this to mean above average or, simply, those to whom normal rules don’t...
Alfred Busi, the protagonist of Jim Crace’s new novel, is a songwriter with an enchanting and consoling voice, so celebrated in his home city that, when the book opens, he is about to be immortalised in bronze on its Avenue of Fame. This city, the narrator tartly informs us, is too fond of awarding medals:
It was the lazy habit of the town and had been for several hundred years to...
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