Issyvoo

John Sutherland’s opinions

• Iain Banks

  As a novelist, lain Banks writes with crystalline economy, on the principle less is more. As an SF writer, more is never enough.

  Read the full piece at London Review of Books John Sutherland London Review of Books 1993
• Anne Tyler

  Anne Tyler’s stories are set in Baltimore, a city which many readers will neither know nor feel guilty about not knowing.

  Read the full piece at London Review of Books John Sutherland London Review of Books 1992
• Saint Maybe

  Ian, we may say, is the accidental hero of a novel – a character who implicitly upbraids his creator for making so much fuss about him.

  Read the full piece at London Review of Books John Sutherland London Review of Books 1992
• Billy Bathgate

  Billy Bathgate starts with a sentence which is 144 words long. Immensely extended syntax is the novel’s stylistic signature and the looping intricately-linked clauses witness to Billy’s skill as a verbal juggler. But there is also a mystery embedded in the diction of Billy’s confessions, something that seems implanted to tease the ear of the reader.

  Read the full piece at London Review of Books John Sutherland London Review of Books 1989