With or Without Angels

Cover image for Boundless as the Sky by Dawn Raffell

Books of Year 2023: Part One

I’m feeling quite pleased with myself having pared back this year’s list to twenty books, a first for me, although I’ll have to guard against more sneaking in as I look back over 2023. As usual, I’m planning four posts, one per quarter, beginning with a remarkable piece of writing which got my reading year

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Cover image for With or Without Angels by Douglas Bruton

With or Without Angels by Dennis Bruton: A beautiful and original response to art

I was intrigued by the blurb for Douglas Bruton’s brief novella, With or Without Angels, which described the book as ‘a response through fiction’ to ‘The New World’ an artwork by the late artist Alan Smith, itself a response to the eighteenth-century artist Giandomenico Tiepolo’s ‘Il Mondo Nuovo’. In his acknowledgements, Bruton explains that after

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