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DAVID SAVILL
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Novel Thoughts: Case Study (Saraband, 2021)
Graeme Macrae Burnet’s Case Study provides novelists with a brilliant example of how the form of a novel can perfectly exploit its...
David Savill
Jan 9, 20243 min read
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Novel Thoughts: The Island of Missing Trees (and a problem for contemporary novels).
In this week's blog, an extended essay in response to James Marriott's take on the contemporary novel. Times columnist James Marriot is...
David Savill
Dec 15, 20239 min read
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Novel Thoughts: Brother of the More Famous Jack (Victor Gollanz, 1982)
Barbara Trapido’s 1982 debut is a dazzling bridge between the romantic dramas and comedies of Somerset Maugham, (or EM Forster), and...
David Savill
Apr 1, 20234 min read
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Novel Thoughts - No-One is talking about this: Patricia Lockwood (Bloomsbury, 2021)
What do we mean when we say a novel feels poetic? In the creative writing classroom, students usually use the ‘p’ word when they detect...
David Savill
Oct 1, 20223 min read
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Novel Thoughts - The Invention of Morel (Alfredo Bioy Casares, 1940)
There are two big questions an author needs to answer when choosing to write in the first person. For whom is your narrator writing, and...
David Savill
Jul 24, 20223 min read
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Novel Thoughts - Swimming Home, by Deborah Levy (And Other Stories, 2012)
(Novel Thoughts is my blog of quick reads on craft and technique in the novel, reacting to every novel I read). Deborah Levy’s Swimming...
David Savill
Jul 20, 20224 min read
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Novel Thoughts - Klara and The Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber and Faber, 2021)
Every year I teach a class in children's fiction. The most difficult reads for my students to enjoy are a particular ‘middle grade’ of...
David Savill
Jul 16, 20224 min read
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Novel Thoughts - Natasha Brown, Assembly (Penguin 2022)
Elsewhere in this blog I have asserted with the (false?) confidence of a creative writing teacher, that a novel can be defined as nothing...
David Savill
Jun 26, 20224 min read
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Novel Thoughts - Antonio Tabbucchi, Requiem: an hallucination (Penguin 1994)
It is nearly always dull to hear other people’s dreams recounted, partly, because in dreams there are no dramatic stakes. Whatever...
David Savill
Jun 19, 20223 min read
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Novel Thoughts: Sandro Veronesi - The Hummingbird (W&N 2022)
If I was asked to demonstrate the potential of the novel to someone who has never read one before, I might suggest The Hummingbird. This...
David Savill
Jun 7, 20222 min read
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Novel Thoughts: Antal Szerb - Journey By Moonlight (1937, Pushkin Press 2001)
Novel thoughts is a blog of my immediate reactions to reading a novel. This is not a critical review or recommendation, but the first...
David Savill
May 29, 20223 min read
47 views
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Novel Thoughts - Sarah Winman, Still Life (Fourth Estate, 2021)
Novel thoughts is a blog of my immediate reactions to reading a novel. This is not a critical review or recommendation, but the first...
David Savill
May 29, 20223 min read
209 views
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Behind the frontlines on March 11 2022
On the M60 westbound in Manchester this morning civilians drove to work under clear skies in light, Friday traffic. An accident on the...
David Savill
Mar 11, 20222 min read
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A European Education
What does Europe mean to you? I was introduced to the history of Europe while careering through the continent on the backseat of an...
David Savill
Oct 20, 20167 min read
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Karadžić’s sentence is the end of a chapter for some, but if the future for Bosnia remains bleak,
They were living in a student dorm. One family per room. Lives packed up into shopping bags. They cooked on Bunsen-burners looted from...
David Savill
Mar 25, 20165 min read
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Two Kurds received in good order
Two men squatted on the dock, in the shadow of a London policeman. I do not know if they had just arrived in one of the rust red shipping...
David Savill
Sep 7, 20159 min read
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Teaching: the importance of being unfashionable
Students experiencing their first Creative Writing workshops fear criticism. Of course they do. They hope they will 'get away' with all...
David Savill
May 27, 20159 min read
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Teaching: The pains of poetry and political commitment
Late in 1949, George Orwell lay dying in University College Hospital. In his superlative collection of essays and memoirs, The 30's and...
David Savill
May 3, 20159 min read
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Research: The challenge of nostalgia in the creative process
The Cold War is back. Both in academic circles and popular culture. The popularity of Tom Robb Smith’s Child 44, (given a big budget...
David Savill
Apr 24, 20156 min read
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Research: Yeltsin's House of Cards
Sehii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevskyi professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University. It is no surprise then, that his account...
David Savill
Apr 16, 20153 min read
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