By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The Hard Way is the quintessential Jack Reacher novel. When it was first published back in 2006, it was the tenth novel by Lee Child to feature the American ex-military policeman turned drifter and modern-day ‘knight errant’. Child’s publishing schedule had become as regular as Reacher’s inner clock (he has an uncanny knack for mentally keeping track of the passing of time even without a watch).
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), or H. D. as she chose to publish, was labelled ‘the perfect imagist’ by various critics and reviewers. Born in the United States, H. D. made her literary name in London, where she was at the centre of the short-lived imagist movement during the First World War.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Sestina’ is a poem by the twentieth-century American poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79), first published in the New Yorker in 1956. The poem, which uses a very specific verse form, describes a grandmother and a child as they sit in a kitchen together, with a mysterious and unspecific air of grief or sadness haunting them both.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Got a Letter from Jimmy’ is a short story by the American writer Shirley Jackson (1916-65). The story, which runs to just a few pages, involves just two characters: an unnamed husband and wife. The husband has received a letter from an associate simply identified as Jimmy; the wife seeks to know what the contents of the letter are, but the husband hasn’t opened it.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
I’m often surprised by how little serious critical attention some of the work of J. G. Ballard (1930-2009) has received. ‘Having a Wonderful Time’ is a good example.
Like many of the short stories from the 1982 collection Myths of the Near Future, this short tale – which is told as a series of postcards sent to England from the Canary Islands – anticipated a number of features of twenty-first-century life long before the twentieth century had run its course.