Laurie McRae Andrew
@lmcraeandrew.bsky.social
Author of 'The Geographies of David Foster Wallace's Novels' (Edinburgh University Press). PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London. Into contemporary fiction, videogames, other cultural stuff. Blog/website at https://lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/
Pinned
The wrong angle, somehow: Ben Pester’s ‘The Expansion Project’
Tom Crowley – the central character of Ben Pester’s The Expansion Project – is having a bad day at the office. In fact, the badness has already started before he leaves the house, as he despairs at…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
New post on Ben Pester's 'The Expansion Project' and the contemporary office novel: lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/t...
Reposted by Laurie McRae Andrew
New post on Ben Pester's 'The Expansion Project' and the contemporary office novel: lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/t...
The wrong angle, somehow: Ben Pester’s ‘The Expansion Project’
Tom Crowley – the central character of Ben Pester’s The Expansion Project – is having a bad day at the office. In fact, the badness has already started before he leaves the house, as he despairs at…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
November 17, 2025 at 10:17 AM
New post on Ben Pester's 'The Expansion Project' and the contemporary office novel: lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/t...
Reposted by Laurie McRae Andrew
'The vital function of @benpester.bsky.social’s weird office fiction is both to make us look askance at the way we organise & value work, & at the same time to prompt us to look for the contours of other possibilities in the strange & alienating spaces of contemporary labour'
Enjoyed this ⬇️
Enjoyed this ⬇️
New post on Ben Pester's 'The Expansion Project' and the contemporary office novel: lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/t...
The wrong angle, somehow: Ben Pester’s ‘The Expansion Project’
Tom Crowley – the central character of Ben Pester’s The Expansion Project – is having a bad day at the office. In fact, the badness has already started before he leaves the house, as he despairs at…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
November 17, 2025 at 2:36 PM
'The vital function of @benpester.bsky.social’s weird office fiction is both to make us look askance at the way we organise & value work, & at the same time to prompt us to look for the contours of other possibilities in the strange & alienating spaces of contemporary labour'
Enjoyed this ⬇️
Enjoyed this ⬇️
Reposted by Laurie McRae Andrew
Ah wow - really loved reading this review of The Expansion Project. I know these things are not for the author really but you have to say thanks when someone is writing at this level about your work. Incredible. So grateful.
New post on Ben Pester's 'The Expansion Project' and the contemporary office novel: lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/t...
The wrong angle, somehow: Ben Pester’s ‘The Expansion Project’
Tom Crowley – the central character of Ben Pester’s The Expansion Project – is having a bad day at the office. In fact, the badness has already started before he leaves the house, as he despairs at…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
November 17, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Ah wow - really loved reading this review of The Expansion Project. I know these things are not for the author really but you have to say thanks when someone is writing at this level about your work. Incredible. So grateful.
New post on Ben Pester's 'The Expansion Project' and the contemporary office novel: lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/t...
The wrong angle, somehow: Ben Pester’s ‘The Expansion Project’
Tom Crowley – the central character of Ben Pester’s The Expansion Project – is having a bad day at the office. In fact, the badness has already started before he leaves the house, as he despairs at…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
November 17, 2025 at 10:17 AM
New post on Ben Pester's 'The Expansion Project' and the contemporary office novel: lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/t...
Reposted by Laurie McRae Andrew
'Perspectives' by Laurent Binet: a clever, playful historical thriller mixing art and politics in C16 Florence - complete with an Assassin's Creed reference and a Renaissance bullet-time moment. What's not to like?
April 14, 2025 at 3:31 PM
'Perspectives' by Laurent Binet: a clever, playful historical thriller mixing art and politics in C16 Florence - complete with an Assassin's Creed reference and a Renaissance bullet-time moment. What's not to like?
'Sick Houses' by Leila Taylor: a fascinating exploration of the real and imagined domestic architecture of horror, both serious about the cultural politics of the genre and joyfully enthusiastic about its pleasures
April 3, 2025 at 8:46 AM
'Sick Houses' by Leila Taylor: a fascinating exploration of the real and imagined domestic architecture of horror, both serious about the cultural politics of the genre and joyfully enthusiastic about its pleasures
Reposted by Laurie McRae Andrew
I've written about grief and labour in Spiritfarer, via Judith Butler, for this month's issue of @unwinnable.com
Sail the spiritual seas. This month's issue of Unwinnable Monthly includes @lmcraeandrew.bsky.social on Spiritfarer, @nyaliss.bsky.social on Bear Pirate Viking Queen and our usual crew on what's piquing their thoughts.
Buy: buff.ly/C5CqHtJ
Subscribe: buff.ly/ErgYpln
Buy: buff.ly/C5CqHtJ
Subscribe: buff.ly/ErgYpln
March 21, 2025 at 2:03 PM
I've written about grief and labour in Spiritfarer, via Judith Butler, for this month's issue of @unwinnable.com
Reposted by Laurie McRae Andrew
New blog post: on Holly Pester's fantastic novel 'The Lodgers', published by @grantabooks.bsky.social
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/w...
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/w...
What had I arrived at?: Holly Pester’s ‘The Lodgers’
It’s not particularly surprising that housing has been a prominent concern in fiction of the last decade or so. On a general level, the experience of domestic precarity, enfolded in a larger discou…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
March 31, 2025 at 11:21 AM
New blog post: on Holly Pester's fantastic novel 'The Lodgers', published by @grantabooks.bsky.social
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/w...
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/w...
New blog post: on Holly Pester's fantastic novel 'The Lodgers', published by @grantabooks.bsky.social
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/w...
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/w...
What had I arrived at?: Holly Pester’s ‘The Lodgers’
It’s not particularly surprising that housing has been a prominent concern in fiction of the last decade or so. On a general level, the experience of domestic precarity, enfolded in a larger discou…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
March 31, 2025 at 11:21 AM
New blog post: on Holly Pester's fantastic novel 'The Lodgers', published by @grantabooks.bsky.social
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/w...
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/w...
Reposted by Laurie McRae Andrew
A fantastic piece about the importance of a meaningful death and how labor ties into Spiritfarer's message of grief. I love this game so much, and @lmcraeandrew.bsky.social has articulated one of the biggest reasons why here.
"[I]n Stella’s work as Spritfarer, labor is reclaimed and redirected toward the ends of care and the creation of grievable life."
Feature Excerpt: @lmcraeandrew.bsky.social applies Judith Butler's theories on grief to Spiritfarer:
Feature Excerpt: @lmcraeandrew.bsky.social applies Judith Butler's theories on grief to Spiritfarer:
Spritfarer and the Labor of Grief - Unwinnable
Judith Butler helps us see how Spiritfarer’s gameplay mechanics connect labor with the politics of grief.
buff.ly
March 27, 2025 at 11:33 PM
A fantastic piece about the importance of a meaningful death and how labor ties into Spiritfarer's message of grief. I love this game so much, and @lmcraeandrew.bsky.social has articulated one of the biggest reasons why here.
'I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There' by @roisinlanigan.bsky.social: a bit of millennial gothic, mixing classic haunted house tropes with Gails and Fleabag references. Finely poised between realism and horror, a compelling invocation of the cursedness of the contemporary housing situation.
March 29, 2025 at 9:44 AM
'I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There' by @roisinlanigan.bsky.social: a bit of millennial gothic, mixing classic haunted house tropes with Gails and Fleabag references. Finely poised between realism and horror, a compelling invocation of the cursedness of the contemporary housing situation.
Reposted by Laurie McRae Andrew
"[I]n Stella’s work as Spritfarer, labor is reclaimed and redirected toward the ends of care and the creation of grievable life."
Feature Excerpt: @lmcraeandrew.bsky.social applies Judith Butler's theories on grief to Spiritfarer:
Feature Excerpt: @lmcraeandrew.bsky.social applies Judith Butler's theories on grief to Spiritfarer:
Spritfarer and the Labor of Grief - Unwinnable
Judith Butler helps us see how Spiritfarer’s gameplay mechanics connect labor with the politics of grief.
buff.ly
March 27, 2025 at 11:00 PM
"[I]n Stella’s work as Spritfarer, labor is reclaimed and redirected toward the ends of care and the creation of grievable life."
Feature Excerpt: @lmcraeandrew.bsky.social applies Judith Butler's theories on grief to Spiritfarer:
Feature Excerpt: @lmcraeandrew.bsky.social applies Judith Butler's theories on grief to Spiritfarer:
'The City Changes its Face' by Eimear McBride: revisits the setup of 'The Lesser Bohemians' in a remarkable novel about language and art as the interface between private darkness and shared/public experience, with McBride's sentence-level experiments matched by subtle structural intricacy.
March 25, 2025 at 9:19 AM
'The City Changes its Face' by Eimear McBride: revisits the setup of 'The Lesser Bohemians' in a remarkable novel about language and art as the interface between private darkness and shared/public experience, with McBride's sentence-level experiments matched by subtle structural intricacy.
Indika is very bizarre and extremely Russian - the theological themes are fine, but its real richness comes from the extraordinary environmental design and a thorough immersion in the absurdist tradition of Gogol, Bulgakov etc.
March 24, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Indika is very bizarre and extremely Russian - the theological themes are fine, but its real richness comes from the extraordinary environmental design and a thorough immersion in the absurdist tradition of Gogol, Bulgakov etc.
'The Peckham Experiment' by Guy Ware: deftly refracts a history of postwar progressive reconstruction, its internal tensions, and its eventual undoing through a singular and well-crafted voice whose (sometimes gleefully) compromised position saves the novel from over-earnest didacticism
March 22, 2025 at 12:40 PM
'The Peckham Experiment' by Guy Ware: deftly refracts a history of postwar progressive reconstruction, its internal tensions, and its eventual undoing through a singular and well-crafted voice whose (sometimes gleefully) compromised position saves the novel from over-earnest didacticism
I've written about grief and labour in Spiritfarer, via Judith Butler, for this month's issue of @unwinnable.com
Sail the spiritual seas. This month's issue of Unwinnable Monthly includes @lmcraeandrew.bsky.social on Spiritfarer, @nyaliss.bsky.social on Bear Pirate Viking Queen and our usual crew on what's piquing their thoughts.
Buy: buff.ly/C5CqHtJ
Subscribe: buff.ly/ErgYpln
Buy: buff.ly/C5CqHtJ
Subscribe: buff.ly/ErgYpln
March 21, 2025 at 2:03 PM
I've written about grief and labour in Spiritfarer, via Judith Butler, for this month's issue of @unwinnable.com
'Orbital' by Samantha Harvey: a slim and sparse reflection on the numinous experience of a planetary view, albeit tempered with insistent consciousness of climate breakdown. Attempts the important work of re-enchantment in an age of Starlink and spiralling ecological disaster.
March 10, 2025 at 12:15 PM
'Orbital' by Samantha Harvey: a slim and sparse reflection on the numinous experience of a planetary view, albeit tempered with insistent consciousness of climate breakdown. Attempts the important work of re-enchantment in an age of Starlink and spiralling ecological disaster.
'Confessions' by Catherine Airey: a big transatlantic multi-generational novel that takes on some hefty themes. The plotting is a bit over-neat, with one coincidence that stretches credulity, but overall it's well structured, precisely written and deftly handled.
March 3, 2025 at 12:32 PM
'Confessions' by Catherine Airey: a big transatlantic multi-generational novel that takes on some hefty themes. The plotting is a bit over-neat, with one coincidence that stretches credulity, but overall it's well structured, precisely written and deftly handled.
Reposted by Laurie McRae Andrew
I knew I shouldn’t have used that @!*$# AI!
A classic example of how Google's AI is garbage, it doesn't understand that the Underground Railroad wasn't a literal railroad
March 1, 2025 at 7:58 PM
I knew I shouldn’t have used that @!*$# AI!
Reposted by Laurie McRae Andrew
NEW POST on Rachel Cusk's 'Parade': a new formal experiment, moving beyond autofiction towards the limits of the novel.
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/02/17/w...
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/02/17/w...
Writing upside down: Rachel Cusk’s ‘Parade’
G is a painter whose career is revitalised when he starts to paint upside down. G is a sculptor of woven spider-like forms whose first major retrospective is disrupted when a man throws himself to …
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
February 17, 2025 at 12:26 PM
NEW POST on Rachel Cusk's 'Parade': a new formal experiment, moving beyond autofiction towards the limits of the novel.
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/02/17/w...
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/02/17/w...
NEW POST on Rachel Cusk's 'Parade': a new formal experiment, moving beyond autofiction towards the limits of the novel.
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/02/17/w...
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/02/17/w...
Writing upside down: Rachel Cusk’s ‘Parade’
G is a painter whose career is revitalised when he starts to paint upside down. G is a sculptor of woven spider-like forms whose first major retrospective is disrupted when a man throws himself to …
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
February 17, 2025 at 12:26 PM
NEW POST on Rachel Cusk's 'Parade': a new formal experiment, moving beyond autofiction towards the limits of the novel.
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/02/17/w...
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/02/17/w...
Reposted by Laurie McRae Andrew
NEW POST on Mary Morrissy's excellent novel 'Penelope Unbound' from @bansheepress.bsky.social, a vibrant reimagining of the life of Norah Joyce
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/01/27/s...
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/01/27/s...
‘See Norah’: Mary Morrissy’s ‘Penelope Unbound’
In October 1904, Nora Barnacle arrived in Trieste with her partner, James Joyce. The couple had come to the city on the promise of work for Joyce at the city’s Berlitz School, and he left her to wa…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
January 27, 2025 at 12:11 PM
NEW POST on Mary Morrissy's excellent novel 'Penelope Unbound' from @bansheepress.bsky.social, a vibrant reimagining of the life of Norah Joyce
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/01/27/s...
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/01/27/s...
NEW POST on Mary Morrissy's excellent novel 'Penelope Unbound' from @bansheepress.bsky.social, a vibrant reimagining of the life of Norah Joyce
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/01/27/s...
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/01/27/s...
‘See Norah’: Mary Morrissy’s ‘Penelope Unbound’
In October 1904, Nora Barnacle arrived in Trieste with her partner, James Joyce. The couple had come to the city on the promise of work for Joyce at the city’s Berlitz School, and he left her to wa…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
January 27, 2025 at 12:11 PM
NEW POST on Mary Morrissy's excellent novel 'Penelope Unbound' from @bansheepress.bsky.social, a vibrant reimagining of the life of Norah Joyce
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/01/27/s...
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/01/27/s...