Sinéad Gleeson’s blog
Extremely short novels are something of a rarity these days. The modern paperback usually weighs in with a respectable minimum of 200 pages. Dipping into Steinbeck’s back catalogue, you’d be hard pushed to find such an average size book from the tome-like East of Eden to the brilliant short novels that made his name. The […]
At some point in their career, most journalists dream of conquering the land of Manhattan’s glossy mags. Undeterred by a world where infamous ball-breaker Tina Brown is Queen, Toby Young went Stateside for five years in search of success, supermodels and better cocaine. Thus begins a voyage of self-discovery bristling with a naivety that rarely […]
His newspaper columns and literary output hint that Hugh Leonard, real and imaginary, is an avuncular raconteur. His stories of people and places, of secrets and rites of passage happen in small Irish towns or anonymous Dublin suburbs. ‘Fillums’ begins, handily enough, with a trailer. In it, an aging playwright worried about his literary reputation […]