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Nicole Flattery

Nicole Flattery's criticism has appeared in the GuardianThe Irish Times and the LRB. Her story collection Show Them A Good Time was published in 2019. Her favourite Chantal Akeman film is News From Home.



Articles Available Online


Chantal Akerman’s ‘My Mother Laughs’

Book Review

October 2019

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

October 2019

There’s a scene in the documentary I Don’t Belong Anywhere, about the Belgian filmmaker’s Chantal Akerman’s life and work, where she discusses her only...

Book Review

August 2018

Lorrie Moore's ‘See What Can Be Done’

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

August 2018

Lorrie Moore writes in her introduction to See What Can Be Done that, at the start of her career,...

Biography | Cattolicissimo trio composed of mother father beloved son God, why doesn’t the English language have an equivalent for –issimo?   Incidental beginnings: the mother (1951) broke off from her Milanese family in the early Seventies, got married rashly and in absence of her parents, by religious rite, for the sake of controversy, asking a cousin to be her best man She has been living in Rome with her husband ‘in exile’, as if in a colony, as if in Africa Nicola’s father (1948) was raised by a single mother, and lived with her in the council estate where they shot Una Giornata Particolare with Marcello Mastroianni and Sofia Loren   Nico’s first eight years of life: he lives with his father, mother and paternal grandmother   The father had attended seminary Then studied architecture Fatti di Valle Giulia (the Italian equivalent of May 1968 in France): the father does not partake, because of his cousin – who he is not really in touch with – who is a Carabiniere On the matter, Nicola quotes from a Pasolini poem, which is also often quoted by his father (remember to ask which one)   The father leaves university Joins the Navy for his compulsory military service   He goes back to uni with a newfound interest in ships and submarines, which will affect his creative production via the dissemination of portholes everywhere in his projects, even on the dividing walls between two rooms, which is unpalatable to the Berengo family, as well as slanted perspectives and sequences of rooms with no connecting corridors   He is a solitary youth; he spends his life putting The Way of a Pilgrim into practice, repeating to himself over and over (when he is angered by the endless queue at the post office; when his mother’s dinner is yet again tasteless; when he inadvertently tears up the wrong drawing) Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me   Despite his marriage he keeps his boyish good looks He becomes morbidly enamoured with his son He doesn’t want him to become sophisticated During a catechism lesson when Nico is eight years old, his father taps into his own reference material,

Contributor

January 2018

Nicole Flattery

Contributor

January 2018

Nicole Flattery’s criticism has appeared in the Guardian, The Irish Times and the LRB. Her story collection Show Them A Good...

Carmen Maria Machado’s ‘Her Body and Other Parties’

Book Review

January 2018

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

January 2018

I’m reluctant to admit this but it’s often easier for me to write about a book I hated rather than a book I loved....

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Interview

December 2017

Interview with Peter Stamm

Seren Adams

Interview

December 2017

Peter Stamm’s international reputation as a writer of acute psychological perception and meticulously precise prose has been growing steadily...

Interview

Issue No. 11

Interview with Philippe Parreno

Ben Eastham

Interview

Issue No. 11

It is the standard procedure, when visiting someone in central Paris, to ask in advance for the door code...

poetry

January 2014

Letters from a Seducer

Hilda Hilst

TR. John Keene

poetry

January 2014

At her death in 2004, Brazilian author Hilda Hilst had received a number of her country’s important literary prizes...

 

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