Review of "The Western Wind" by Samantha Harvey

Remarkable book by the author of "Orbital", and almost nothing like that. It's a first-person narrative set in the late C15th, in which the narrator is the parish priest in a not-very-prosperous west country village. It's of course embedded in the world of medieval Christianity, a mixture of theology and folk-superstitions and lots in between (how would you characterise the belief that someone who dies "un-shriven" cannot enter heaven?). There's a suspicious death that's being investigated by an outsider, a rural dean who is in effect the narrator's boss. 

What makes it quite so special is the narrative structure. It takes place over four days, but as readers we experience them in reverse order, so that the narrative really unfolds, but in an unexpected way - we learn gradually that what we think we have "seen" is actually something very different. 

Definitely worth a read. We listened to it as an audio book first, and I didn't get the structure properly until I actually read a paper copy.

Review of The End of The Tour

A very unusual film - about how David Lipsky (a journalist for Rolling Stone) goes to interview the writer David Foster Wallace by joining his writer's book tour, and the relationship that develops between them. In between it's about what goes on between writers and their subjects, and the business of book tours, and what integrity demands of reporters, and so on.

It's slow, and not so beautiful to look at, but really interesting. And now I want to read more of David Lipsky.

Watched on Netflix.