Philip Spires commonplace book

I have kept a commonplace book for many years. It's a place where scraps of impressions are filed for future reflection. It's not a diary, it's just a mental scrapbook, concentrating on book reviews, concert reviews, visual arts and some occasional pieces on travel. It is also a place where I occasionally reflect on what I write. Details of my books can be found at http://www.philipspires.co.uk

Friday, September 30, 2011

Several characters in search of a plot – The Country Life by Rachel Cusk

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The Country Life by Rachel Cusk presents several promises, but eventually seems to break most of them. When Stella Benson, a twenty-nine-yea...

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Of Wit and Tragedy - Sculptures by Hanna Gerlind Glauner in Alfaz del Pi

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Sculpture is capable of presenting itself in a highly conceptualised manner. Shapes can be featured purely as themselves, as forms that requ...

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Between The Assassinations by Aravind Adiga

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Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger won the Booker Prize and was notable for its intriguing form. I thought it would be a hard act to follow. It wou...

Kansas In August by Patrick Gale

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Patrick Gale´s novel Kansas In August was an interesting, if never a very engaging read. It features some rather strange people. There is a ...

Friday, August 26, 2011

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel An Artist Of The Floating World

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Superficially, Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel An Artist Of The Floating World seems to present a gentle observation of manners. There’s a daughter ...

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Wole Soyinka’s Aké

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I expected to get a lot more from Wole Soyinka’s Aké than I did. It’s not every day that the childhood memoirs of a Nobel Laureate come to h...

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Old School by Tobias Wolff

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Superficially, Old School by Tobias Wolff suggests the gentility of an adolescent memoir. The paroxysms of growing up will be heartfelt, but...

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About Me

philipspires: I was born in Wakefield and was brought up in Sharslton, a mining Village. I went to London University and then became a maths teacher, working initially as a volunteer teacher in Kenya. I spent sixteen years in London, in Balham and Islington. In 1992, I left Britain for Brunei and then Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. I currently live in La Nucia, near Benidorm in Spain. I am interested in the relationship between nature and nurture, birthright and experience. Themes of culture and identity and their relation to economic and social roles underpin my writing. What we are born into relates to what we become, but we are rarely in control. What others do, our interests and intellects and the way we choose to earn a living, all of these shape us into what we become. It may be that culture is the sum of all assumptions that others make on our behalf, whereas identity represents our reactions to them. I did a PhD on the effects of education in economic development in the Philippines. I was President of Alfas del Pi Music Society for twelve years.

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