Tag: horror

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Don’t give the customer what they want, give them what they don’t know they want yet

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Gene Pressman’s memoir of his time working for the legendary New York Department store Barneys founded by his grandfather, comes when the authors helps open its vast new outpost on Madison Avenue in 1993. The luxury store, complete with mosaic floors, custom-made furniture, saltwater fish tanks, a restaurant and floors of beauty, jewellery and clothes. Pressman writes “ The store is amazing. It’s hard to be humble knowing stores just didn’t look like this – not anymore”. Barney’s had, he says, “gone back to the past to the grand  department stores just didn’t look like this – not anymore. Barney’s had … Continue reading Don’t give the customer what they want, give them what they don’t know they want yet

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“I believe that life is not damnation but grace”

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In Misery of Love a spiritual seuquel to the acclaimed Yellow Negroes and other Imaginary Creatures, Yavan Alabé continues his unflinching interrogation of race and family in modern France. Colonial history haunts this stunning spectral-looking graphic novel, a spiritual sequel to the author’s Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures. Alabé focuses on the dream-like memories of a woman named Clare, blonde, slight, willful- faces her estranged father as her family comes together to bury her grandparents   One of earlier stories suggests there was a double suicide.  Alagbé seamlessly glides between narratives of the family’s past and present, all haunted by the legacy … Continue reading “I believe that life is not damnation but grace”

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Constant struggle to find daily necessities

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In 1966, China is on the cusp of a decade of upheaval, and the furnaces of Old Kiln have never been this cold. The village’s once-famed ceramics production has almost ground to a halt. Only ancient grudges smoulder beneath its poverty-stricken streets, never forgotten by the two families that preside over the village making them “backward, simple, petty, absurd and cruel” Jia writes. Between them stands the adopted Inkcap, whose mysterious origins leave him unloved and barely tolerated. Historically they have always been told what to do, and they have had the inertia of people trained in passivity. “Everyone is … Continue reading Constant struggle to find daily necessities

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Dark Desires, a smell of leather, the flash of harness, the snap of a latex gloves

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Welcome to the radical, vibrant world of sexual fetishists. In 21st century commodity culture, we are all intimately involved with objects we covet a Birkin bag; we keep trainers box-fresh. We are, in a sense, all fetishists. Occasionally this desire spills into something more subversive. Second Skin offers a tour through the materials, objects and power dynamics commonly fetishized, unpacking their histories, their expressive potential, and the communities they give rise to. Drawing from her encounters with fellow fetishists and kinksters, it is alos the story of ex-fashion critic, Anastasiia Fedorova’s own journey of what it means to come to terms … Continue reading Dark Desires, a smell of leather, the flash of harness, the snap of a latex gloves

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The act of Atonement

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Master storyteller, and author of more than 60 bestsellers, Stephen King’s rumours of retirement due to literary exhaustion, is unfounded as his shift of genre from horror to crime after recharging his creative batteries. Never Flinch is about a killer on a diabolical revenge mission, and another about a vigilante targeting a feminist celebrity speaker – featuring the beloved Holly Gibney. When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to “kill thirteen innocents and one guilty” in act of atonement of the needless death of an innocent man”. Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea … Continue reading The act of Atonement

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Cruelty and Trauma 

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Carrion Crow is Glasgow-based Heather Parry’s fourth book, set in London’s Chelsea in the late 19th century, where  Marguerite Périgord, a 19-year-old  daughter of once aristocratic French family, is confined to the attic by her mother “for the sake of her well-being”. Her mother Cécile doesn’t believe she is quite ready for married life. So she leads Marguerite to the attic, where the lack of light will allow her to “acquire the upper-class Pallor” required of a new wife, and the small meals that Cécile delivers on a tray will help Marguerite “establish within herself the reserved palate and physical restraint of the … Continue reading Cruelty and Trauma 

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Emotional cost of Greed; Corruption of the Russian super rich

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Former tutor Sarah Thomas’s incarnation of tell-all memoir, and glossy juicy and dark expose, has fictionalised her experience of life with Russian billionaires. Melanie an aimless English graduate who signs on with a teaching agency, ends up in boundless luxury and with a family in need of tutoring for their bright little precocious girl. Ivan and Kata, the Russian oligarch, employs Melanie as an 11-plus coach, who moves around the global empire. They live a life of luxury, gorgeous clothes, gadgets, maids and art, with perfect meals and bed made fresh every time. Alexandra, her charge, grows from cute 11-year-old … Continue reading Emotional cost of Greed; Corruption of the Russian super rich