Book extract: Fat by Hanne Blank

BOOK EXTRACT: FAT BY HANNE BLANK The multiple personalities of a public enemy, sexual fetish and essential organ

The multiple personalities of a public enemy, sexual fetish and essential organ

"Ugh, I just feel so fat today," the woman near me in the locker room says to her friend as they get dressed after their workout. I look over – discreetly, as one does – to catch a glimpse of the grimacing side of her face as she zips up a pair of close-fitting blue jeans over a barely rounded lower abdomen, hip bones evident under taut fabric.

Blu-ray: Polytechnique

★★★★ BLU-RAY: POLYTECHNIQUE Depiction of 1989 femicide in Montreal gives no quarter

Denis Villeneuve's depiction of the 1989 femicide in Montreal gives no quarter

The French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve is best known for mainstream films like Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049, stylishly expressive in their harnessing of alienating terrains, notably deserts and plains.

David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet review - is the end nigh?

★★★★ DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: A LIFE ON OUR PLANET Is the end nigh?

A powerful fear and tear-inducing documentary from the legendary naturalist and broadcaster

At 93-years-old and with a career that spans nearly 60 years, David Attenborough has spent a lifetime transporting audiences from the comfort of their sofas to the dazzling, often bewildering, majesty of the natural world. Now, he offers what he calls his ‘witness statement’, a Netflix documentary that not only charts Attenborough’s remarkable career, but also how the world has changed for the worse over those years.

Ian Williams: Reproduction review - a dazzling kaleidoscope of life's tragicomedy

★★★★ IAN WILLIAMS: REPRODUCTION Dazzling kaleidoscope of life's tragicomedy

Restless tale of stress and strife is invigorated by endless wordplay and stylistic surprises

Ian Williams’s writing is always in motion. For his 2012 poetry collection Personals, and since, he has composed little circular poems, similar (in style though not sentiment) to the posies you sometimes find inscribed on the inside of rings. He incorporates a couple into Reproduction, his debut and Griffin Prize-winning novel. “I’m sorry I made you hate me”, “no I don’t hate you baby don’t hurt me”, they read.

Album: Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension

★★★★★ SUFJAN STEVENS - THE ASCENSION A brilliant song cycle for our times

A brilliant song cycle for our times

Sufjan Stevens is an artist of remarkable ambition. His 80-minute long new album, with 15 beautiful and poetic songs, belongs to a long line of pop experimentation that runs through from The Beatles and George Martin’s Stg Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to Björk’s own highly literate and endlessly inventive mix of dance music and daredevil sonic exploration.

Wayne Holloway-Smith: Love Minus Love review – powerfully excavating the tormented poet's psyche

 ★★★★★ WAYNE HOLLOWAY-SMITH: LOVE MINUS LOVE Painful and heartfelt poems set against a history of personal tragedy

Painful and heartfelt poems set against a history of personal tragedy

Roughly two years since the posh mums are boxing in the square scooped first place in the 2018 National Poetry Competition, Wayne Holloway-Smith returns with Love Minus Love, his second full-length collection.

She Dies Tomorrow review - intimations of mortality

★★★★ SHE DIES TOMORROW Amy Seimetz's apocalyptic gloom fest

Kate Lyn Sheil excels in Amy Seimetz's apocalyptic gloom fest

Watching the semi-satirical psychological horror film She’ll Die Tomorrow conjures the last lines of TS Eliot’s "The Hollow Men": “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.” Writer-director Amy Seimetz’s second feature doesn’t depict a widescreen apocalypse – it’s a low-budget indie, after all – but offers a collective whimper from a not very likeable group of people l

Mary South: You Will Never Be Forgotten review - canny tales of uncanny tech

Short stories interweave the literary and the digital with intriguing results

Never Let Me Go meets free, two-day shipping.” This is how Mary South describes “Keith Prime”, the first story in her debut collection. Undoubtedly, Kazuo Ishiguro springs to mind in the bizarrely personable world of the clinical organ farm, but South stretches the theme. She introduces the poignant figure of a fully-grown, childlike person with no language capabilities.