Helen Phillips Archives - A life in books

Paperbacks to Look Out for in June 2018: Part Two

This second batch of June paperbacks begins with a book from a favourite author. Comprising nine stories, two of them pleasingly lengthy, William Boyd’s The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth ranges from a philandering art dealer who gets his comeuppance to a novelist fleeing eviscerating reviews who bumps into one of his worst maulers and spots […]

The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips: Out-Kafkaing Kafka

26 May 2017 / 13 Comments

This is the first English language novel I’ve read from Pushkin Press, a publisher of whom I’m very fond. Their books are often a little out of the way: Hiromi Kawakami’s dreamlike Record of a Night Too Brief, Auđur Ava Ólafsdóttir’s wacky Butterflies in November and Dorthe Nors’ Mirror, Shoulder, Signal with its out-of-step protagonist,

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