1 week ago 'Husband has walked out on me again but he's blaming childhood trauma'

Coleen Nolan advises a reader in her 40s who does not know where to turn after her husband asked for a divorce, saying he hated feeling restricted by marriage

Events

1 week ago Question 7 by Richard Flanagan audiobook review – a bold memoir of life and near

History and autobiography are brilliantly intertwined as the Booker-winning author explores the choices and chance connections that shape our existenceAt the start of this boldly experimental memoir, the Booker prize-winning author Richard Flanagan visits the site of a Japanese labour camp where his late father was interned during the second world war and where he ends up awkwardly having his photo taken with a former guard, Mr Sato. The war ended weeks after the US launched an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing 60,000 people in less than a minute. That bomb also led to Flanagan’s father, then days from death, being freed, which in turn allowed him to father a child who would grow up to become a writer. “How many people need to die in order that you might read this book?” Flanagan asks.Question 7, named after a riddle posed by Chekhov, is a book about the connections and choices that shape our lives, for better or worse. Flanagan is the narrator, his reading by turns mournful, reflec...

Politics

1 week ago Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata review – a future without sex

The Convenience Store Woman author imagines the creep of a new worldview, in a novel that highlights the weirdness of normal lifeIn Japanese writer Sayaka Murata’s fiction, characters do perverse things in order to “play the part of the fictitious creature called ‘an ordinary person’”. This description comes from Keiko, the 36-year-old narrator of Convenience Store Woman. Keiko’s conformist family and friends can’t believe she can be happy being single and working a dead-end job at a convenience store. Keiko finds an unexpected way to make it look as though she is normal: she keeps a man in her bathtub, hoping that everyone will simply assume they are a couple. A similar idea appears in Murata’s short story Poochie, from the collection Life Ceremony. A young girl takes a friend to a shed in the mountains to meet her pet; the friend is surprised to discover that the pet is a middle-aged man. Murata is interested in the lengths humans will go to in order to domesticate ...

Politics

2 w. ago This is how we do it: ‘I’m from an evangelical Christian family and didn’t know what an orgasm was till I was 24’’

Amelia and Ben waited until after marriage to have penetrative sex. Now, initiating intimacy makes her feel powerful and liberatedHow do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymouslyI’m heartbroken for my young self and angry at how much fear I had around feeling sexual Continue reading...

Society

2 w. ago 'In 20 years of reviewing, I'm not sure I've read a funnier book, or one I've enjoyed more': The best Literary Fiction out now

Anthony Cummins reviews the best Literary Fiction out now.

Politics

3 w. ago ‘Marriage feels like a hostage situation, and motherhood a curse’: Japanese author Sayaka Murata

The Convenience Store Woman author is renowned for challenging social norms in darkly weird near-future fiction. She discusses sex, feminism and her struggles to be an ‘ordinary earthling’“I have had relationships with humans, but I’ve also loved a lot of people in stories,” Sayaka Murata, the Japanese author of the bestseller Convenience Store Woman, confides a few minutes into our interview. “I’ve been told by my doctor not to talk about this too much, but ever since I was a child, I’ve had 30 or 40 imaginary friends who live on a different star or planet with whom I have shared love and sexual experiences.”It is 7pm in Tokyo, mid-morning in London. Sitting upright at a desk in an empty publisher’s office, the 45-year-old author – wearing a cream silk blouse and with a neatly curled bob – might be reading the news rather than discussing imaginary friends. For context, her latest novel to be translated into English, Vanishing World, depi...

Events

3 w. ago Corontation Street's Betsy Swain 'lashes out' as she takes 'revenge' after Rob Donovan shooting

As fans of the ITV soap know, Betsy was the victim of Rob's hostage situation last month when the convicted murderer returned to the street

Events

last month Meagan Good says marriage to ‘best friend’ Jonathan Majors is ‘amazing’ but ‘feels different’

Jonathan Majors and Meagan Good married in March after announcing their engagement in November 2024

Politics

last month Novelist Katie Kitamura: ‘As Trump tries to take away everything I love, it’s never been clearer that writing matters’

The Japanese-American author of unsettling new novel Audition talks about why fiction isn’t frivolous, family life with fellow writer Hari Kunzru, and how US authors are facing a critical momentSome years ago, Katie Kitamura came upon a headline that read something like: “A stranger told me I was his mother.” The headline gripped her, but she never clicked through to the article. She imagined the story would offer some explanation – perhaps the author had given up a child for adoption, for instance. “I was much more interested in not having a concrete answer but just exploring the situation itself,” she tells me. “I’m intrigued by the idea that you could be very settled in your life and something could happen that could overturn everything that you understand about yourself and your place in the world.”The headline provided the inspiration for Kitamura’s fifth novel, Audition, a beguiling and unsettling book that opens with a meeting between an unnamed actor and a handsome college s...

Politics