• Landscape view of a remote house, with water in the foreground and mountains in the background.

Ellroy and Me

By Nathan Ashman It was 2006 and James Ellroy was in the midst of penning the much anticipated third volume in his ‘Underworld USA Trilogy’, an epic criminal history of post-war America. I, meanwhile, was just about to begin my…

Normal People and the strangeness of other people

Towards the end of Sally Rooney’s acclaimed novel Normal People, the two main characters, Connell and Marianne, talk sleepily one morning about whether it’s possible ever really to know another person. ‘I guess everyone is a mystery in a way’,…

The comforts of mystery

By Thomas Leitch Mystery and detective stories have always been my comfort-food reading. From the time I was weaned away from Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys to Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie in the eighth grade, I’ve never…