Skin by Sergio del Molino review – a meditation on psoriasis and the psyche
A sufferer writes about how the skin condition affected figures as diverse as Joseph Stalin, John Updike and Cyndi Lauper
September 2021
From the Guardian archive
John Updike’s Rabbit, Run reviewed – archive, 1961
15 September 1961: It is part of the novel’s excellence that its incidents can arouse so much physical disgust without being ultimately disgusting
April 2021
Hadley Freeman's Weekend column
A new biography ‘unveils’ Philip Roth as a misogynist. Tell me something I don’t know
Hadley Freeman
The campaign to cancel the author is typical of today’s all-or-nothing approach, where if you don’t like everything about a public figure, you can’t like anything
July 2020
Books that made me
David Baddiel: 'I don't really have shame as an emotion'
The writer and comedian on admiring John Updike, crying over Station Eleven and laughing at Alan Partridge
June 2020
Tips, links and suggestions
Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?
Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them
May 2020
'I wanted something 100% pornographic and 100% high art': the joy of writing about sex
As authors from Chaucer to Hollinghurst have shown, sex reveals our emotions, instincts and morals. The question is not why write about sex, claims author Garth Greenwell, it’s why write about anything else?
March 2020
Further reading
Out of his shadow: the best books about female artists
From Celia Paul to Dora Maar to the abstract expressionists in postwar New York, Annalena McAfee on the female artists finding their way into the limelight
December 2019
Top 10s
Top 10 novels about adultery
From Graham Greene’s anguished transgressions to Milan Kundera’s happy-go-lucky erotic adventures, fiction has long adored illicit affairs
November 2019
Books that made me
Ann Patchett: ‘Hunger by Roxane Gay opened my eyes’
The novelist on learning from John Updike, failing to read Anthony Trollope and the laugh-out-loud comedy of Nina Stibbe
September 2019
Books blog
The Testaments, 34 years in the making: the longest gaps between sequels
The three decades between The Handmaid’s Tale and Margaret Atwood’s much anticipated follow-up makes the wait for George RR Martin’s The Winds of Winter seem brief
June 2019
Book clinic
Book clinic: which authors can help me come to terms with getting older?
Novelist Deborah Moggach recommends writers who confront the passing of the years, from John Updike to Virginia Ironside
January 2019
Back pages
Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike – archive, 17 January 1982
In the second of a new series of reviews from the Observer archive, Martin Amis marvels at the third instalment of John Updike’s ‘Rabbit’ series
October 2018
Top 10s
Top 10 deaths in fiction
From Dickens to Woolf and Updike, novelists have taken on a dark but compelling challenge: to imagine their characters’ final experience
July 2018
Further reading
The best tennis books: Benjamin Markovits serves up his favourites
As Wimbledon 2018 starts, the novelist tips books on Agassi and Federer – with a volley from Roth and Updike
May 2018
Andrew Davies to defend John Updike with Rabbit TV series
TV writer tells Hay festival he aims to ‘wipe out’ idea Updike was a misogynist
April 2018
Book clinic
Book clinic: which current authors produce the most magical prose?
The supernatural, witchcraft or sex can be spellbinding, while others conjure gold from the everyday human struggle
Book clinic
Book clinic: which male authors excel at writing female characters?
From Tolstoy to John Banville, our expert suggests the men who can write from a woman’s perspective
Books blog
'A nice set of curves if I do say so myself': a Twitter lesson in how not to write women
A male author’s claim to be living proof that men can write authentic female characters has provoked glee online – but he’s not the worst offender
February 2018
The parent trap: can you be a good writer and a good parent?
Doris Lessing left her marriage and children to write. Seventy-five years on, Lara Feigel examines the author’s maternal ambivalence and explores her own struggle to balance motherhood and freedom
December 2017
Top 10s
Top 10 novels about God
He doesn’t appear very often in fiction, but in these books – by authors ranging from Fyodor Dostoevsky to John Updike – his impact is almighty
