Class and Death

Joint Review: Class

Jane Psmith & John Psmith | Mr And Mrs Psmith’s Bookshelf | 22nd September 2025

Book reviewers discuss Paul Fussell's 1983 work on the American class system, which divides US society into nine layers: "Top out-of-sight, upper, and upper middle classes all constituting relatively high, then middle class and three degrees of proletarian in the middle, with destitute and bottom out-of-sight at, well, the bottom." Class is a form of culture, determined by taste as much as by net worth (8,000 words)

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Death And The Gardener

Georgi Gospodinov, trans. Angela Rodel | LitHub | 2nd October 2025

Novel extract from the Booker-winning Bulgarian writer. A son reflects on his elderly father's later years and wonders if he should have visited more, stopped him working in his garden sooner, even though the plants were his friends. Told with spare prose and economy of expression. The opening line alone is an argument to read this novel: "My father was a gardener. Now he’s a garden" (1,400 words)