Category Archives: creativity and its discontents

December Thoughts

Posted on December 8, 2022 by Gabriella West

The last month of 2022 is somehow upon us! The weather is so cold and dreary, I can’t get warm. However, I found a winter image I had never seen before, a Marc Chagall painting of a church in the … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity and its discontents, News, Personal, Self-publishing | Tagged 2023, Bookbub, creativity, promotion, Smashwords, snow, The Knight's Return, winter, year of the rabbit | 2 Comments

Review: Putting the Rabbit in the Hat by Brian Cox

Posted on February 6, 2022 by Gabriella West

What a life Brian Cox has had. The weird zaniness of some of his memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat (Grand Central Publishing, 2022, $14.99 on Kindle), is amplified by the fact that the “Editorial Reviews” section on the … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity and its discontents, Reviews | Tagged acting, brian cox, putting the rabbit in the hat | Leave a comment

The Letters of Shirley Jackson—a Preview!

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Gabriella West

I’ve been busy reading the delightful, yet somewhat vexing Letters of Shirley Jackson (Random House, 672 pp., $14.99 on Kindle) and writing a long review of it! Finding a home (irony alert, as Shirley was always focused on the physical … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity and its discontents, News, Reviews, Writing | Tagged 1950s, cruelty, dysfunctional relationships, female breadwinners, feminism, husbands, marriage, mental health, Morris Minors, Shirley Jackson, The Internet Review of Books, The Letters of Shirley Jackson, Vermont, women writers, women's lives | Leave a comment

Happy Pride 2021

Posted on June 5, 2021 by Gabriella West

Pride comes but once a year! This month we are emerging from a pandemic. It feels like we ought to be joyous and yet there is more anxiety in the air than joyousness, for the most part. (Although on June … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity and its discontents, LGBT, Personal | Tagged ADHD, Apple, audiobook, Barnes & Noble, connecting the dots, Covid, Daniela Acitelli, Gay Pride Month, Google play, June, passings, Pride, Smashwords, time of grace, women's lives | Leave a comment

A Final Word on Blake Bailey

Posted on May 29, 2021 by Gabriella West

You can’t keep a bad man down. That’s what sprang to mind when I read on Twitter yesterday that Blake Bailey’s infamous biography of Philip Roth, unpublished by Norton, had been picked up by Skyhorse Publishing and will be rushed … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity and its discontents, News, Personal, Writing | Tagged academics, alcoholism, biography, bisexuality, Blake Bailey, decline and fall, double lives, Eve Crawford Peyton, fathers, Lusher, Philip Roth, publishing, Rape, Scandal, Skyhorse Publishing, sons, The Splendid Things We Planned, Valentina Rice, W.W. Norton | Leave a comment

Review: Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Posted on May 23, 2021 by Gabriella West

Occasionally, I will pick up a library book (and I vow to do this more, post-pandemic). I wanted to review a striking, mostly forgotten novel by 20th-century English author Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978), whose long life spanned almost a century … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity and its discontents, LGBT, Reviews, Writing | Tagged 20th-century women writers, bisexuality, Communism, feminism, historical fiction, Jewish fiction, lesbian fiction, NYRB, Penguin, relationships between women, revolutionaries, Summer Will Show, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, women in love | Leave a comment

It’s Spring!

Posted on May 2, 2021 by Gabriella West

And that’s always exciting. This was what my kitchen looked like last month, with the fruit trees outside in the terraced back yard pressing in at the window. Things are greener now. The cedar waxwings are taking their last bites … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity and its discontents, Personal | Tagged abuse, billie eilish, Blake Bailey, British Vogue, fashion, feminism, Matt Gaetz, sexuality, spring, teen girls, women | Leave a comment

I don’t post enough literary advice/inspiration, but now that I am submitting pieces a bit more again, here is some brilliant advice about putting yourself out there, from a new writer connection on Twitter. It jumped out at me today. … Continue reading →

Posted on June 13, 2020 by Gabriella West | Leave a comment

Review: Moving On—Two Ex-Beatles’ Very Different Lives in the 1970s

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Gabriella West

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Beatles lately. Perhaps it’s because I started off the New Year by reading Mark Lewisohn’s masterful Tune In (2013), the first book in his proposed Beatles’ trilogy. It’s long and exhaustive, but you … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity and its discontents, Reviews | Tagged 1970s, Astrid Kirchherr, Beatles, Bermuda, Coming Up, depression, diaries, Double Fantasy, ex-Beatles, Fred Seaman, Future, John and Yoko, John Lennon, Man on the Run, Mark Lewisohn, Murder, Myth, Nowhere Man, paul mccartney, Robert Rosen, Starting Over, Tom Doyle, truth, Wings | Leave a comment

Review: Between Heaven and Hell by David Talbot

Posted on February 16, 2020 by Gabriella West

Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of My Stroke (Chronicle Prism, 176 pp, $22.95, January 2020) David Talbot—journalist, popular historian, longtime San Francisco resident, and author of Season of the Witch—has written a surprisingly vulnerable, intimate, often funny and engaging … Continue reading →