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Was the ‘Worst Novelist in History’ In on the Joke?

Over the course of her career, [Amanda McKittrick] Ros became better and better at writing badly, and her popularity soared as a result. In this regard, she bears comparison with the New York socialite and singer Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–1944), whose operatic warbling was so popular that tickets for her show at Carnegie Hall sold out within two hours. Perhaps Ros was living in a permanent state of cognitive dissonance, or perhaps she accepted the ridicule as consolation for her fame. A more intriguing possibility is that she was engaged in an elaborate form of trolling. Read more

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‘The Singularities’ by John Banville

The Irish novelist John Banville writes prose of such luscious elegance that it’s all too easy to view his work as an aesthetic project, an exercise in pleasure giving … But what drives Banville — and his relentless hunt for the ideal adjective and simile and cadence — is a desire to touch something elusive and not quite nameable while providing a parallel or overlapping commentary on that doomed but never pointless effort. Read more

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Colm Toibin’s ‘The Magician’ wins Folio Prize for literature

The jury of three other writers — Tessa Hadley, William Atkins and Rachel Long — said they surprised themselves by reaching a unanimous decision. They said Toibin’s book “is such a capacious, generous, ambitious novel, taking in a great sweep of 20th century history yet rooted in the intimate detail of one man’s private life.” Read more

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