Miscellaneous Musings

  • Book Review: Belonging by Umi Sinha

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    Review of Umi Sinha’s remarkable debut novel, ‘Belonging’. A novel which brings together multiple narratives to create an extraordinary portrait of the ways in which family history and identity are never far behind us.

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  • Walking Inside Ourselves – An Appreciation of The Lagoon by Janet Frame

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    “My writing saved me” – Janet Frame In 1951, following a diagnosis of schizophrenia, Janet Frame was admitted to a mental hospital. In an era before the development of psychotherapeutic medication there were few treatments available for patients suffering from severe mental illness. One “cure” did exist, however: the transorbital lobotomy. To perform a transorbital

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  • Book Review: The Good Son by Paul McVeigh

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    One Saturday morning in 1988 two British Army corporals, David Howes and Derek Wood, accidentally drove their car into an IRA funeral procession. They were surrounded, pulled from their vehicle then stripped and taken to waste ground where they were shot. The incident, which became known as the ‘Corporal Killings’ was filmed by television crews

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  • Those They Leave Behind

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    There’s a list. Warning signs. Things to look out for. Common misconceptions. Such as this: if a person is determined to kill him/herself, nothing is going to stop them. It’s listed under false. As in: this is a false statement. You can do something. If you know what to look for. If you find the

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  • R.I.P. Lou Reed

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    I grew up in a strangely music-less household. It was rare to hear the radio playing or for music to fill the rooms of our home. What music did find its way into our house as I was growing up, was a weak amalgam of easy listening and hand me down tunes from my grandparents

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