A review by roba
Ulverton by Adam Thorpe

3.0

Lots of this is really, really good historical writing that brings olden days people vividly to etc. etc. etc. but Jesus, some of these olden days people do go on a bit. I know that's down to the authenticity of a series of 18th century letters or an old bloke talking to you in the pub or whatever, but you can give that impression while still editing a bit. And then a couple of chapters have the opposite problem – those in dialect aren't really long enough for you to get the hang of reading them fluently (or at least aren't artfully enough constructed – Alan Moore or Paul Kingsnorth will have you reading what looks like nonsense at first glance within a couple of pages). And the TV script chapter – I'm sure it was fun to look up all the shot abbreviations, but again, you could edit anything that's not a crash zoom.

So three quarters really good, but I skipped the rest.