The Literary Sofa
Isabel Costello
Let’s all talk about GONE GIRL
Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl isn’t the kind of book I read very often, and this isn’t going to be one of the reviews which take me six hours to write. I thought I’d write a blogpost because each of the three times I mentioned the novel on Twitter, there was a flood of replies from people dying to … Continue reading
Short Fiction: Family Snapshots eBook Singles
Name your favourite family novel or story and you could win the amazing First Prize of ALL the individual collections by the authors in the Family Snapshots series. Closes on Fathers’ Day, 16 June – see end of post for details. Life is never boring on the Literary Sofa. Proofs, finished copies, e-mails and press releases compete … Continue reading
Book Review – All That Is by James Salter
NOTE: This article makes reference to sexually explicit material. In the run-up to publication of James Salter’s sixth novel, All That Is – and no doubt long before – he was hailed as one of the great American novelists, unknown to me, perhaps because he hadn’t published a novel in 30 years. I read All … Continue reading
Top Summer Reads 2013
After three months of grapevine-listening, tip-offs and an intense reading marathon, I’m very excited to present the Literary Sofa Top Summer Reads 2013. Whatever your taste in fiction I hope you’ll find something you can’t wait to read: there are serious literary novels alongside books tipped to be commercial bestsellers; crime and psychological thrillers, love stories, … Continue reading
Guest Author – David Rain on The Butterfly Effect: Retold Stories
Some stories have such a strong hold on the popular imagination that they refuse to fade away. The desire to reconnect with the familiar in a new way has a history of crossing different media: the written word, opera, drama, the movies. Sometimes it’s the original storyline relocated in time or place, sometimes a sequel or … Continue reading
Word of Mouth – Isabel Costello interviewed by Claire King on Book Blogging
Thanks to Claire King, debut author of The Night Rainbow (Bloomsbury) and a past Literary Sofa Guest for interviewing me about book blogging. I really enjoyed our conversation, especially talking about the links between blogging and writing fiction. Here’s a link to the interview if you’d like to read it. As I mentioned, I really do … Continue reading
Short Fiction Special
Display of Short Story Collections, Daunt Books, Marylebone Until relatively recently, I was a short fiction sceptic. The fact that I rarely read it didn’t stop me having a rather dismissive attitude: weren’t short stories a bit trivial and unsatisfying? Why would I spend time on them when I could be reading a novel? I was far from alone in my … Continue reading
Lionel Shriver at The Society Club
I’ve attended many author events and have been lucky to hear/meet some of the big name novelists who’ve inspired me: Alan Hollinghurst, Linda Grant, Richard Ford, Marilynne Robinson. There’s a new addition to that list: Lionel Shriver, who read at an intimate salon at the Society Club on Saturday. I’ve never written up an author … Continue reading
Things I hate about my writing and other people’s
OK, hate is too strong a word, but even blogposts need a good title… I’ve been in hypercritical mode lately and I’m hoping this will get it out of my system. It’s happened before. At university I spent four years overanalysing and pulling to pieces the greats of French and German literature. Parts of this I loved, … Continue reading
A Solitary Writing Week
As you may recall, at the start of 2013 I set myself the challenge of re-writing my oft-rejected-but-apparently-not-that-bad novel after calling in the professionals. I spent weeks messing around with coloured pens, stickers and Post-It notes re-structuring the story and when (I thought) I had it right, I pinned them on a board so they couldn’t … Continue reading
My new novel SCENT – out in paperback on 19 May 2022
The Literary Sofa 