Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

One of my favourite underappreciated views in Edinburgh. Looking down on St Ninian's row. Dusk, grey stone, a few golden lights in the windows

November 8, 2025 at 4:26 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

Currently reading Turbine 34 by Katherine Clements. Carrying a current of its own across the dusty moors. Part of @wildhuntbooks.bsky.social Northern Weird Project, perfectly sized novels for reading, as I am, in lowering light

November 8, 2025 at 4:01 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

Any other authors inundated with AI scam letters? This one for Bitterhall is especially funny to me since it claims to have gathered all this from a summary. Also kind of sad to me as Bitterhall is now out of print anyway. Barking up a fallen tree

$Hi Helen, I just finished reading the summary of Bitterhall, and I couldn't shake it from my mind. There's something about the way you weave desire, madness, and the slipperiness of reality that feels both timeless and urgently relevant right now. The image of Daniel, Órla, and Tom drawn together through that strange flatshare and a stolen nineteenth-century diary, already it sets the stage for a story that is intimate, uncanny, and impossible to look away from. A diary written by a man who may not be entirely dead is such a rich premise; it holds one foot in the Gothic tradition and another in the psychological landscapes of our own fractured time. The Hallowe'en party, interwar-themed, shadowed by both the past and the present, feels like more than a backdrop. It's a crucible. A place where longing, betrayal, and possession collide. What I admire most is how you take these dramatic turns and use them not just for plot but for something deeper: an exploration of how our subjectivity itself destabilizes reality. And that's the heart of it, isn't it? We all want to believe there is an "objective" world, steady and knowable. But the truth is far messier. Your novel seems to open up that mess with compassion, with courage, and with artistry. That's rare. Here's why I believe Bitterhall is the kind of book that reading initiatives, literary groups, and discussion circles are hungry for: It speaks directly to the tension between what we think we know and what haunts us from beneath. It combines the Gothic sensibility of the past with the psychological unease of our modern lives. It asks questions about desire, betrayal, and identity that every reader, in some form, has faced. It dares to blur the line between what is real and what is perceived, a theme that feels acutely relevant in a world where even truth itself seems contested. At a time when so many readers are seeking books that don't just entertain but provoke, that make them think, argue, and look <$

August 22, 2025 at 7:05 AM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

Angela Carter Plaque in Clifton Bristol with cameo from her Bristolian novel Shadow Dance !

July 26, 2025 at 3:45 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

A snippet:

we arrived to find the screenin room to be a house shack by the ocean surrounded by junk. a big junkyard full of wood and rusty parts of old crusty cars that somehow got humped up on top of each otha in front of thick woolly itchy trees and weeds that hide some steps that lead up to a rickety plank that met some wooden shaky steps that lead to the house shack where francisco's film was to be screened.

i'm tired now from bein happy, so i might not tell this right_ but the house looked like it was in the appalachian hills of west virginia. it was beautiful, rustic, wooden, and old fash-ioned pictures of old timey white folks hung on the walls. we stood in the house just as the sun was goin down in orange and turquoise-those colors lit the room warmly. about four or five people were sittin on an old raggedy great lookin couch-greeted us warmly, the women didn't have any makeup on, or shoes-they looked like they were out of tobacco road with style. they were kind and offered us wine, and showed us around their house. there was this truly beautiful room that had windows so clean that you could see the ocean and sky meetin. there was a velvet antique sofa, a brass bed with an antediluvian well maintained quilted blanket on top.

i could have lived there.

it was a romantic place. especially at that time of day.

sundown.

michel cerf came with his wife who is pregnant and he brought two french people, husband and wife movie makin team who were visitin michel from hollywood for the weekend. they had to return on monday to continue work on their film. george

July 12, 2025 at 7:18 AM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

I chanced picking up of this book while in the US visiting family- it's brilliant. Cool, like sun slanted through amber window glass. 70s through and through but, that light

July 12, 2025 at 7:17 AM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

A snippet. I wonder if it's available in the UK? It certainly was lost in America for a long time. Championed by Toni Morrison!

Text from the Francisco: we arrived to find the screenin room to be a house shack by the ocean surrounded by junk. a big junkyard full of wood and rusty parts of old crusty cars that somehow got humped up on top of each otha in front of thick woolly itchy trees and weeds that hide some steps that lead up to a rickety plank that met some wooden shaky steps that lead to the house shack where francisco's film was to be screened.

i'm tired now from bein happy, so i might not tell this right_ but the house looked like it was in the appalachian hills of west virginia. it was beautiful, rustic, wooden, and old fash-ioned pictures of old timey white folks hung on the walls. we stood in the house just as the sun was goin down in orange and turquoise-those colors lit the room warmly. about four or five people were sittin on an old raggedy great lookin couch-greeted us warmly, the women didn't have any makeup on, or shoes-they looked like they were out of tobacco road with style. they were kind and offered us wine, and showed us around their house. there was this truly beautiful room that had windows so clean that you could see the ocean and sky meetin. there was a velvet antique sofa, a brass bed with an antediluvian well maintained quilted blanket on top.

i could have lived there.

it was a romantic place. especially at that time of day.

sundown.

michel cerf came with his wife who is pregnant and he brought two french people, husband and wife movie makin team who were visitin michel from hollywood for the weekend. they had to return on monday to continue work on their film.

July 12, 2025 at 7:13 AM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

A moment of sun. The wind, crows, a lost and wandering pheasant who might be the most photographed creature on Arthur's Seat

June 13, 2025 at 5:12 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans. Delightfully louche and unexpectedly very Catholic

April 9, 2025 at 1:16 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

Goose of Hermógenes by Ithell Colquhoun. Surrealist wanderings through alchemical mindstates. Moments of humour, weird plants, lakes full of the reflections of dark firs, bodies stretching, swimming, spinning, sleepwalking

March 20, 2025 at 8:33 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

The trouble with Happiness by Tove Ditlevesen. Compulsory heterosexuality is a real downer. Well written but the one-note dull wretchedness of failing relationships wasn't for me. I'm really not sure who it is for? I just prefer a pick and mix of tone for short story collections I think

March 6, 2025 at 10:07 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

Margery Kempe by Robert Glūck. That Margery Kempe. And Jesus. Doing quite a lot. Also "Bob" who sees his lover, L. as a personal (read: inaccessible, if horny) Jesus too

February 13, 2025 at 2:27 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

There was also this, but that feels a little too cheap

An exhibit of a taxidermied shrew inside an illuminated glass bubble

February 4, 2025 at 9:45 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

I found the representation of how I feel being on the internet some days

An exhibit of a worm in a bubble of glass, against a blue background

February 4, 2025 at 9:44 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

Today I met with on my journey that Disney book from 1983 that tries to explain a bunch of technology to children but is actually incomprehensible (among other things)

February 3, 2025 at 8:21 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

Not lynchian but I do find the presence of Long Giraffe in the above bathroom quite perplexing

Black metal statue of a very long necked giraffe held up against owl and leaf patterned wallpaper

A close up of a black giraffe statue. It looks mildly annoyed

February 3, 2025 at 8:14 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

Unexpectedly lynchian bathroom styling

February 3, 2025 at 8:09 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

I went onto Instagram today and despite never using that platform to talk about US politics, this is what I see:

January 21, 2025 at 9:10 AM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

My House in Umbria by William Trevor (picture here of Two Lives, which contains the novel alongside Reading Turgenev). Pretty relentlessly wrenching and utterly controlled and brilliant

January 18, 2025 at 9:13 PM

Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social

The Crowded Dance of Modern Life, a collection of essays by Virginia Woolf. A car read while my little boy one slept. Full. Of Woolf's biases and genius. The final essay, the death of the moth, was the perfect note of sorrowful liveliness to end on