Originally published on the Ploughshares blog on 24th December 2021. When Charles Dickens set out to write A Christmas Carol, he was not concerned with distilling the essence of the Christmas spirit in a tale of redemption and festive cheer that
This post originally appeared on the Ploughshares blog in December 2019 The dark side of contemporary British masculinity is explored through superstition and folklore in two recent novels by British authors, Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss and The Devil’s Footprints by John Burnside. Moss’s
This post originally appeared on the Ploughshares blog in November 2019 Kobo Abe’s 1962 novel, The Woman in the Dunes, translated into English by E. Dale Saunders in 1964, delineates in simple yet evocative prose one man’s experience of unjust capture and
Shakespeare’s early scheming women—Joan of Arc, Eleanor Duchess of Gloucester, and Margaret of Anjou—share a set of overlapping traits. They are each driven by their ambition for ever greater power, which distorts their femininity into something unnatural.
This post originally appeared on the Ploughshares blog in August 2019. The Old West is a place of myth as well as of history. Popularized through the Western genre, the mythological West is commonly associated with the activities of cowboys, gunslingers,
This post originally appeared in Cleveland Review of Books Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the internationally famous Little House books. In it, Fraser tells a story of sweeping historical significance,
This post originally appeared on the Ploughshares blog in July 2019. Traditional fairytales, despite their reputation as stories for young children, are replete with horror and gore. The fairytale genre is one in which evil queens dance themselves to death
This post originally appeared on the Ploughshares blog in June 2019. Originally published in 2002, The Days of Abandonment sits uncomfortably in its cultural moment. Elena Ferrante’s examination of the spiraling decline of an abandoned wife resists the hopefulness of the girl-power-era,
This post originally appeared on the Ploughshares blog in May 2019. Philosophies for achieving genuine happiness and a good life are never intended to create dystopias. Nevertheless, many writers enjoy taking these ideas to their extremes, creating in their fictions
This post originally appeared on the Ploughshares blog in April 2019. In The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes examines the relationship between art and power, or, more specifically, between individual creativity and a controlling state. The novella is a fictionalized biography