DAVID SAVILL

Graeme Macrae Burnet’s Case Study provides novelists with a brilliant example of how the form of a novel can perfectly exploit its...

In this week's blog, an extended essay in response to James Marriott's take on the contemporary novel. Times columnist James Marriot is...

Barbara Trapido’s 1982 debut is a dazzling bridge between the romantic dramas and comedies of Somerset Maugham, (or EM Forster), and...

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...

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...

(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...

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...

Elsewhere in this blog I have asserted with the (false?) confidence of a creative writing teacher, that a novel can be defined as nothing...

It is nearly always dull to hear other people’s dreams recounted, partly, because in dreams there are no dramatic stakes. Whatever...

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...

Novel thoughts is a blog of my immediate reactions to reading a novel. This is not a critical review or recommendation, but the first...

Novel thoughts is a blog of my immediate reactions to reading a novel. This is not a critical review or recommendation, but the first...

On the M60 westbound in Manchester this morning civilians drove to work under clear skies in light, Friday traffic. An accident on the...

What does Europe mean to you? I was introduced to the history of Europe while careering through the continent on the backseat of an...

They were living in a student dorm. One family per room. Lives packed up into shopping bags. They cooked on Bunsen-burners looted from...

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...

Students experiencing their first Creative Writing workshops fear criticism. Of course they do. They hope they will 'get away' with all...

Late in 1949, George Orwell lay dying in University College Hospital. In his superlative collection of essays and memoirs, The 30's and...

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...

Sehii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevskyi professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University. It is no surprise then, that his account...