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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,...

1   A mural with a soldier and a worker at its centre Broken tiles on the floor A red star, peeling Angles from the ground, from up high Angles that require crouching and climbing, dirt under fingernails     2   He loves nothing more than a derelict GDR factory, an abandoned asylum An amusement park left to the elements   The weekend comes around and he sets off with his bag of provisions Snacks, a pre-rolled zoot His DSLR with a wide-angle lens, a macro for close-ups     3   I called it ruin porn   That was a mistake   We were sat in a café in Schillerkiez when I said it    First time we’d met    I was flicking through his photos of something abandoned Military hospital? Cement factory?   He grabbed the camera from my hands   Told me, Don’t call it that    I said, What should I call it then?   It’s the thing I love most about this place, about Berlin, he said, eyes fixed on the camera’s LCD screen    The waiter came by, and we watched in silence as he set down our order Two Americanos and a thick slice of mohnkuchen We exchanged dankes and bittes, waited for him to retreat   Aren’t you scared? I asked   Scared of what?   Glass, debris… needles The polizei picking you up?   You go running in Görlitzer park, no?    He paused Looked down at his camera, then back at me, asked: Come with me some time?     4   We got chatting on the app   A late summer evening, Hasenheide park   A sarong for a picnic blanket, a portable speaker on top There was a spliff going round, a bottle of Sekt warmed by the sun   I thought I’d meet him in the bushes once I was tipsy enough But he wanted to chat, exchange pics – not nudes Not just yet   He said he was from Holon, Israel And from the pics that he sent I could tell he was of Yemeni descent   How’d you guess?   Those cheekbones, I typed in response My dad is from Aden Jewish   He’s from Yemen?   From Aden    Haha I thought that was a stereotype    What is?   That the Adenim think that they’re separate    Aden was a country   Was, he replied, with the eye-roll emoji     5   Rollies Negronis Weserstrasse   We met at the bar

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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fiction

February 2013

The Currency of Paper

Alex Kovacs

fiction

February 2013

‘Labour is external to the worker, i.e. it does not belong to his essential being; that in his work,...

poetry

February 2012

Giant Impact Hypothesis

James Midgley

poetry

February 2012

I bought a satellite’s eye from the market. To look through it involved the whole god-orbit, a cotton-wooled Faberge...

feature

July 2012

Run, Comrades, #YOLO! — Cursory Notes on Radical Hashtag Forms

Huw Lemmey

feature

July 2012

I’m not up on the Internet, but I hear that is a democratic possibility. People can connect with each...

 

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