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/
New post in time for the weekend: on George Saunders's 'Vigil' and the questionable value of empathy in the face of corporate climate denial lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2026/03/13/t...
The old, familiar, generalized fondness: George Saunders’s ‘Vigil’
The jury has been out on George Saunders lately. There’s no denying his place on the A-list of American literary fiction, widely lauded and established as a subject of academic study, with an immed…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
New post in time for the weekend: on George Saunders's 'Vigil' and the questionable value of empathy in the face of corporate climate denial lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2026/03/13/t...
The old, familiar, generalized fondness: George Saunders’s ‘Vigil’
The jury has been out on George Saunders lately. There’s no denying his place on the A-list of American literary fiction, widely lauded and established as a subject of academic study, with an immed…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
NEW WRITING on last year's Goldsmiths Prize winner, C. D. Rose's 'We Live Here Now' (@melvillehouse.bsky.social) - via Mark Fisher, the weird and the eerie, the value of artworks, and the rhapsodic flow of global capitalism... lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2026/01/26/b...
Better weird than eerie: C. D. Rose’s ‘We Live Here Now’
There’s an enduring modern attraction to the weird and the eerie. For Mark Fisher, in his book The Weird and the Eerie, the appeal of these two ‘modes’ is connected to ‘a fascination for the outsid…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
NEW WRITING on last year's Goldsmiths Prize winner, C. D. Rose's 'We Live Here Now' (@melvillehouse.bsky.social) - via Mark Fisher, the weird and the eerie, the value of artworks, and the rhapsodic flow of global capitalism... lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2026/01/26/b...
Better weird than eerie: C. D. Rose’s ‘We Live Here Now’
There’s an enduring modern attraction to the weird and the eerie. For Mark Fisher, in his book The Weird and the Eerie, the appeal of these two ‘modes’ is connected to ‘a fascination for the outsid…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
'Ghostland' by Edward Parnell: lively and engaging exploration of how the shadowy, haunted sides of modern British writing and culture are rooted in place and landscape
‘Helm’ by Sarah Hall: the UK’s only named wind as a transhistorical thread drawing together fragments from the stone age to the present. Landscape, climate, ecology as enduring structures of human thought and action, from archaic myth to modern science.
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
'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 ⬇️
Laurie McRae Andrew@lmcraeandrew.bsky.social · 10mo agoNew post on Ben Pester's 'The Expansion Project' and the contemporary office novel: lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/t...
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.
Laurie McRae Andrew@lmcraeandrew.bsky.social · 10mo agoNew post on Ben Pester's 'The Expansion Project' and the contemporary office novel: lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/t...
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
NEW POST: on Natasha Brown's 'Universality' lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/07/28/w...
Words are your weapons: Natasha Brown, ‘Universality’
How are the relationships between power and discourse formed in contemporary British journalism and (what passes for) public debate? In what ways do class, race and economics interact with conventi…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
NEW POST: on Natasha Brown's 'Universality' lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com/2025/07/28/w...
Words are your weapons: Natasha Brown, ‘Universality’
How are the relationships between power and discourse formed in contemporary British journalism and (what passes for) public debate? In what ways do class, race and economics interact with conventi…
lauriemcraeandrew.wordpress.com
'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
I've written about grief and labour in Spiritfarer, via Judith Butler, for this month's issue of @unwinnable.com
Unwinnable@unwinnable.com · 2y agoSail 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
New blog post: on Holly Pester's fantastic novel 'The Lodgers', published by @grantabooks.bsky.social 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
New blog post: on Holly Pester's fantastic novel 'The Lodgers', published by @grantabooks.bsky.social 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
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.
Unwinnable@unwinnable.com · last yr."[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:
'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.
"[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:
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
'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.
'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
Unwinnable@unwinnable.com · 2y agoSail 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
'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.
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...
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
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...
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