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He added: “Read, listen to music, try to keep the body and mind very active and, last but not least, do not be afraid of a virus that will pass, in the same way that you wouldn’t be afraid when you get behind the wheel of your car, knowing that throughout the year there are so many road victims.” … [Read more...] about Don’t fear coronavirus, says Andrea Bocelli before Milan concert

‘Suddenly my show felt insignificant’ I had been preparing a new solo show, blending absurd, slapstick elements with a story about the emotional upheaval caused by having to move out of the flat where I’d lived for eight years. I would have been taking it back to my favourite venue, Heroes @ The Hive. As world events spiralled, it became clear that the fringe could not go ahead for public health and financial reasons. Suddenly, my show felt insignificant – how could I possibly talk about the emotional upheaval of moving house when a far more significant global upheaval had happened? There is one idea in the show that keeps haunting me – the idea of leaving an old life behind and half-wanting to get back to it, but knowing we never can. It now feels like a much bigger idea. I hope some version of this show will survive and that I find a place to perform it in late 2020 or early 2021. I’ve realised that if I do continue making silly, imaginative stuff … [Read more...] about ‘I’ll miss the camaraderie’: readers on the Edinburgh festival cancellation

From that point on Porter’s tale abandons chronology to freewheel through time and place, in a series of seemingly random vignettes that loop through and around one another like knitting, veering off into new patterns, picking up dropped stitches of plot. Children reappear as lovers, lovers as negligent grandparents. Peripheral characters are brought abruptly into the foreground, new ones arrive without introduction to take centre stage. Events are revealed in screenplay form or through exchanged letters. … [Read more...] about The Travelers by Regina Porter review – a sparkling American epic

This is a little book about a big subject. It is about how to “find a new way of living”. Rage is brewing just beneath its surface. But it’s complicated, not least because Levy has a gift for homemaking. She writes about it as a process of “empathy” (she uses the word more than once), and reflects that it is “an act of immense generosity” in women to “be the architect of everyone else’s wellbeing”. … [Read more...] about The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy review – short, sensual, embattled memoir

This is such a terrifying thought that I’m going to nip across the garden and make tea in Celia’s kitchen. If I can find the sweet, shy house cat, I will try and persuade her to sit on my lap in the shed. This cat knows that I adore her, so she takes advantage of my love and begs for snacks. Yes, procrastination is part of the writing day and I do enjoy browsing Celia’s vast collection of books. … [Read more...] about Deborah Levy: ‘I have grown to love my writing shed in every season’