The Act of Writing

"The American Spirit, the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and civilise. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. Our destiny by divine prescription - the American imperative." This quote from Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad is the one that, for me, reveals the heart of the novel. This White American attitude is what the novel seeks to expose, not just in the American's of the 19th century, but which still resides within the White American's of today. The Underground Railroad follows the experience of plantation slave Cora, and her journey on the Underground Railroad towards the North and her freedom. Along the way she see's much of humanity- the best and the worst of what humans have to offer. This novel is very much about the way humans connect to each other, or rather, how they don't. With the author attemp...

“The future isn’t a warning my friend, it’s a promise, and it won’t be broken by us. That’s the nature of the trap we’re caught in.” The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is one of those novels that comes around once a year and on word of mouth alone becomes a massive, overnight sensation. Personally, I remember hearing about this book months before it was published, and thinking that it was an interesting concept, but ultimately not something I gave a lot of thought to. That is, until the cover design came out. Just seeing how stunning the designs were kept the book in the back of my mind until I finally saw it on my local Waterstones bookshelves. I knew then and there that I had to have it, so later that day a copy came home with me. And it very quickly cemented itself as one of my very firm favourites. From the very first page I was spellbound. The main character, Aiden, knows about as much of the plot as the reader does, i.e: nothing at all. It is only as you fol...