Sirens review — Meghann Fahy's sweary alcoholic lights up this black comedy
How far do you go to please your boss at work? Buy them a cup of coffee, have their back in a meeting. Perhaps. You are, however, unlikely to mist their underwear with lavender or happily accept their used chewing gum in your mouth when they tell you your breath is six out of ten. But that's because your boss isn't giving you the 'perfect' lifestyle you dreamt of. Nor might their cultlike charisma have you under a complete spell.
• House of Dragon's Milly Alcock: 'Matt Smith said he felt like a predator'
That's the situation between fresh-faced twentysomething Simone (House of the Dragon's Milly Alcock) and the socialite Michaela, played by Julianne Moore in Netflix's swift-paced, largely entertaining miniseries Sirens (just
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey review – beyond the bounds of fiction
From her debut, Nobody Is Ever Missing, to 2023's Biography of X, Catherine Lacey's work has tested the forms and fabric of the novel with brilliant unease. In The Möbius Book, her experiment crosses the blurred border of fiction into something else. Life writing, autofiction, memoir? Whatever you call it, The Möbius Book is deeply serious and engrossingly playful, and it lavishly rewards serious, playful attention. A Möbius strip is a length of any material joined into a loop with a half twist. It's an uncanny shape, common and obvious, easily created and yet awkward to describe geometrically. For literary purposes, a Möbius is interesting because there's intricate structure and constraint but no ending. It goes around again, mirrored with a twist. Lacey's book takes this literally, the text printed from both ends, with memoir and fiction joined in the middle. Twin stories experiment with plotlessness and irresolution, while remaining aware of the way fiction attaches itself to linear plot and reverts to romance and quest. Characters find and lose love, find and lose meaning. In one half, two women, Edie and Marie, reminisce about their messy love lives and Christian beliefs in Marie's grotty apartment, ignoring the pool of blood forming outside a neighbour's door. In the other half, the first-person narrator leaves a controlling partner, recalls an ascetic adolescence and struggles to write and think about faith with clever friends during lockdown. Lacey is fascinated by literary form and by the metaphors for literary form, finding fiction at once a constraint and a space for play. Late in the day, the narrator, 'with trusted friends who knew how, got tied up and whipped', as 'a rite in all this, the chaos of having more freedom than I knew what to do with'. It's impossible, in a book so preoccupied with crucifixion, martyrdom and self-denial, not to see the image of the twisted Möbius loop in this friendly bondage. The structures of novels and the iconography of Christian martyrdom are both narrative responses to suffering; both offer freedom through constraint. But for Lacey, suspicious of pleasure, the compatibility of faith and art is questionable. The two modes of the book, which I hesitate to call fiction and memoir because neither is wholly committed to realism or reality, undermine each other, with images and anecdotes reappearing in transmuted form. The shadow of the angry, manipulative ex-partner falls across both, challenging the narrator's memories and intentions although, reassuringly, never inviting the reader's distrust. Edie's recounting of a transformative encounter with a dying, talking dog which speaks of the meaning of suffering (is 'dog' a Möbius rendition of 'God'?) is reprised when the narrator attends to a man lying on the street. In the first-person section, the narrator sees Matisse's painting The Red Studio in New York's Museum of Modern Art, 'the red I imagine on the floor of an otherwise white room', reflecting the blood pooling under a neighbour's door that Edie and Marie in the novel section decide is probably 'paint or something'. As the narrator comments: 'Reality at large has never been my subject, but interiority always has been.' Lacey asks large questions about interiority, especially with regard to the subject of Christian faith. For some readers, it may be an alien idea that the sharply modern intellectual rigour on display here could be combined with religious conviction. How can a narrator who can play off Proust against Gillian Rose seriously expect to find consolation in the old myths about the baby in the manger and the man rising from death? It's a question Lacey acknowledges, partly as unanswerable: 'We want to speak of gnosis and mysticism without our phones listening to us and populating browser ad space with advertisements for Goddess Retreats and bogus supplements and acupuncture mats.' Even so, the narrator attempts an exorcism, employs an 'energy healer', is seduced by ideas about magic numbers. 'Symbolism is both hollow and solid, a crutch, yes, but what's so wrong with needing help to get around?' The question is not rhetorical. There's a deep ambivalence in this book about needing literary and philosophical 'help to get around', about whether we're allowed to want or need art, which is related to the narrator's lack of appetite and consequent emaciation. 'I was afraid of the line between basic needs and cravings, between living and lust.' The fear of slipping from necessity into pleasure shapes the distrust of fiction. What if storytelling is for fun? What if we don't really need it? What if only what's necessary is true, or only truth is necessary? Inevitably, the fictional half of this book refuses many of the satisfactions of a novel. Like a miniature homage to WG Sebald's Austerlitz, the present action is mostly the recounting of past events, so that most of the characters, times and places appear only through a conversation between friends. There are complicated, triangular relationships in the background, between characters who never quite take shape, whose voices are only – and unreliably – recalled. Third-person narrative always calls into being a narrator, another layer of artifice, and here the slippage between present, past and past historic tenses also constantly reminds us that this story is at once engaging and not real. The questions are constant, implicit, teasing, elaborated rather than answered in the dark mirror of life writing. They don't go away. You can go round again. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey is published by Granta (£16.99). To support the Guardian buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Daily Record
an hour ago
- Daily Record
Rose West welcomes granddaughter after paedophile son has baby with former model
Serial killer Rose West has become a grandmother again after her paedophile son Stephen, 51, and his fiancée Emma Bradley, 39, welcomed a baby girl named Eden. Rose West has welcomed another grandchild into the world after her son fathered a child with an ex-glamour model. Stephen West and his betrothed Emma Bradley are now parents to little Eden, yet 71 year old Rose, behind bars serving a whole life term, will never meet her newest grandchild due to Stephen severing all contact with his notorious mother. Despite the trepidation of Emma's kin over their romance, given Stephen's past conviction in 2004 for underage sex offences, the couple forged ahead. The 51 year old who once lived in the gruesome family home confessed: "There's a bit of my dad in me." His infamous father, Fred West, committed a series of murders with Rose between 1967 and 1987 in Gloucestershire. In 1995, Fred was discovered deceased in his cell. Nearly three decades into her incarceration, Rose has reportedly ceased efforts to contest her judgment since 2001 and seems to accept her fate in prison. Now, insiders relay to The Sun that Stephen and Emma plan to exchange vows come August at Newport's Celtic Manor hotel, reports the Mirror. Despite this happy occasion, it is understood from a source that Emma's family remains unsupportive of the match, discomforted by Stephen and citing "a rift" created in the family. Emma, a trained nurse stationed at Gloucester Royal Hospital, brings two daughters from a former relationship into the fold. Following unsettling reports indicating that Rose may be struggling with her health and has been transferred to a disabled room in prison "because she can barely walk," Emma disclosed that she and her partner were oblivious as they maintain no contact. Acknowledging that they've watched the new Netflix documentary Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story, Emma revealed that her fiancé Stephen "doesn't want to say anything because his main priority is the little ones." She elaborated: "He is adamant, at this time of his life he's got a young family to protect." Stephen, himself a grandfather, has eight children from two previous marriages. As for Rose's experiences behind bars, an insider divulged to The Sun: "She never really leaves the wing she's held on and is escorted all the time by prison officers if she goes anywhere. Sometimes she sits in the communal areas on her own. "No one talks to her because everyone knows who she is and what she did, even if she has changed her name. When I was there, she tried to make friends with the other women and gave them gifts, like vapes, but she was rejected. She likes to watch nature documentaries on the TV in her cell, especially ones about birds." In an effort to distance herself from her heinous acts, it's purported that West shelled out £36 to officially adopt the name Jennifer Jones. Reports suggest she went through the deed poll process last December, expressing to acquaintances that it represents a step towards moving forward. Nonetheless, her true identity remains common knowledge at the all-female HMP New Hall near Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Some prisoners reject her overtures of companionship, leading her to consume tomato soup solitarily in her cell for breakfast, followed by prolonged periods of knitting and conversing with the television due to her limited mobility. West is currently detained in New Hall's designated section called Rivendell House, where she occupies one of the 30 en-suite cells available to inmates, each furnished with a laptop for ordering food. Inspection reports suggest that the shared spaces in this unit are "more inviting" compared to other areas within the prison.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Sofia Richie and husband Elliot Grainge spotted on rare outing with daughter Eloise after marking milestone
Just days after sharing her daughter Eloise's first birthday with her social media followers, Sofia Richie was spotted out on a rare outing. The 26-year-old socialite was spotted in Brentwood on Sunday with her daughter and husband Elliot Grainge. Her husband Elliot - who she tied the knot with back in 2023 - was also spotted giving her daughter a kiss during the outing. Richie was spotted wearing a v-neck white t-shirt with her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. She also donned black oversized sunglasses while carrying a beverage during the family outing. The sister of Nicole Richie completed her look with light blue jeans that were folded at the cuffs and brown sandals. Her husband Elliot - who she tied the knot with back in 2023 - was also spotted giving her daughter a kiss during the outing Her husband Grainge was seen wearing a brown shirt under a light white coat with white pants and brown loafers. The socialite recently celebrated her first Mother's Day, sharing a rare snap of her lifting Eloise in the air with her 11 million Instagram followers. She captioned the post — in which she wore jeans, a pale yellow shirt, and periwinkle ballet flats — 'My mini.' It has so far collected over 336,000 likes, including one from fellow new mom Hailey Bieber. Last month, Sofia threw a backyard party complete with little pink toddler-sized tents, a bounce house, a tiered cake and even an adult dressed as a baby. But when she posted updates from the festivities to Instagram, the standout image was a heart-melting snap of her and Elliot doting over Eloise on a pile of cushions. In her caption, Sofia wrote a touching message in which she reflected on the 'mix of emotion' she felt watching her daughter complete her first year in the world. 'A year ago today my little girl was born. I didn't realize her first birthday was going to be such a mix of emotion for me,' Sofia wrote. 'On one hand it's the most amazing beautiful milestone. On the other hand I look back and realize those tiny little moments are something I'll never get back.' 'On one hand it's the most amazing beautiful milestone. On the other hand I look back and realize those tiny little moments are something I'll never get back.' In spite of the bittersweet nature of the occasion, Sofia gushed: 'Watching her grow has been a gift. My greatest achievement will ALWAYS be her.' She added: 'She has given me purpose, and I am nothing without her. Elliot and I couldn't love anything in this life more. I don't know what I did to deserve my little buggie, but all I know is my heaven is right here on earth with her so beyond blessed'. Sofia and Elliot tied the knot in the South Of France in April 2023, in a glittering ceremony at the glamorous Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes. They began dating in 2021, but had apparently been acquainted with each other for several years before striking up their romantic relationship.
