MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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The New Abject
Real and abstract revulsion compelling themes of dread-zone anthology
ORACLE OF ABJECTION: Julia Kristeva
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CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
ACCORDING to critic and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, abjection involves either a confrontation with our sense of physical being or a separation between the self and a rejected “other.” Objects of revulsion can be tangible, such as faeces and bodily fluids, but some forms of dread are abstract and ambiguous.
The New Abject collection of horror stories draws on the broad nature of Kristeva’s definition, which has inspired a loosely related set of tales that deal with the things that make us shudder and retch.
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STEPHEN ARNELL looks back to when protesters took to the streets in London demand to Irish liberty, fair pay and free speech — and wonders what’s changed in 138 years
