SPIKE MAGAZINE

Bible, manifesto, rant, autobiography, and instruction manual rolled into one. Reviewed by Vikki Littlemore Caitlin Moran’s How To Be a Woman, putting water on the fire of my own year-long hope, is far from a how-to guide to being anything. What

Vanessa Libertad Garcia interviews actor, author and pioneer of Australian gay culture about his novel The Set In 1969, the Australian public would know Roger Ward’s face from TV shows like Skippy. Less than a year later, he would gain tabloid infamy

Jacob Knowles-Smith considers whether gender politics have lost their direction and clout through the prism of two recent books Anyone who has even the briefest acquaintance with nightclubs in recent years will have seen girls dressed as Playboy bunnies

A report on the changing nature of sexuality in India by Maria Tonini The status of sexual minorities in today’s India is in a state of transition after homosexual sex was decriminalised in 2009. While the legal judgment can be framed as a move towards

Dan Coxon Over the last few years Chuck Palahniuk has revelled in the sordid, the grotesque, and the downright dirty like a particularly literate pig in shit, and for many readers his decision to set a novel within the pornography industry must have

James McConalogue Bettie Page Confidential See all books about Bettie Page at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Directed by Mary Hannon and starring Gretchen Mol [Bettie Page], this film celebrates the equally despised and distinguished

Chris Mitchell [Ed note - this interview was conducted before Abby Lee's real identity was revealed by a "quality" Sunday newspaper days after the publication of GWAOTM. You can read about Abby being stalked by journalists and the subsequent fallout

James McConalogue The Possibility Of An Island – Michel Houellebecq See all books by Michel Houellebecq at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com “The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles. A figure in transition

Emma Garman One night, twenty-four-year old recent Minnesota transplant Diablo Cody was walking home from her dull ad agency job when the words “Amateur Night” on a topless bar’s marquee beckoned irresistibly. Even though Cody had

Chris Mitchell A collection of essays from women working in the US porn industry and women consuming porn outside it, Naked Ambition is an intelligent and provocative survey of pro-porn female opinions. There’s little in the way of gushing praise

Ben Granger Saint Morrissey – Mark Simpson See all books by Mark Simpson at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com This book is not for people who’ve never, even briefly, fallen under Morrissey’s spell. Don’t bother; it’ll only

Chris Hall talks to Patricia Duncker about sex, death and sending porn through the German postal system Speaking from her home in Aberystwyth on the day of the Stop the War rally, Patricia Duncker is excitedly bellowing

Jayne Margetts on the writing of Chuck Palahniuk When Bret Easton Ellis unleashed his novel, American Psycho, with its beautiful 18+ logo scripted on a lurid, Picasso-esque cover, my mind went into overdrive. Ellis’

Chris Hall talks about the dark side of capitalism and the deceptions of reality with J.G. Ballard Walking along Oxford Street the day after I finished reading JG Ballard’s new novel, Super-Cannes, it struck me, literally, the total acceptance

Miriam McDonald Dead and Gone – Andrew Vachss See all books by Andrew Vachss at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Every review I’ve seen of one of Andrew Vachss’ novels talks a lot about the man first. It’s similar

Robin Askew meets porn star Annabel Chong to discuss her infamous DVD documentary Sex: The Annabel Chong Story [See also: Make Your Own Porn Movie: An interview with UK porn director Anna Span] “Oh my god – this couple just turned around and

Chris Mitchell meets Lawrence O’Toole, author of Pornocopia: Porn, Sex, Technology and Desire It’s a well-worn joke that any dinner-party discussion of the Internet will inevitably include a mention of finding pornography while on-

Robin Askew discovers why artist Julian Murphy turns household appliances into fetish objects of desire Bristolian born and bred, 40-year-old Julian Murphy studied Design for Print at Brunel College. His acclaimed fetish art, which he describes

Jayne Margetts Scar Culture – Toni Davidson See all books by Toni Davidson at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Canongate’s Rebel Inc imprint has become the torchbearer for the Dysfunctional Generation. If grim reality,

Robin Askew Pornocopia – Laurence O’Toole See all books by Laurence O’Toole at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com "To write, as I have, with an enthusiasm for something so loathed in certain quarters is maybe asking for

Jayne Margetts It’s no secret that the thought of wading through another chapter and verse of literary cultural dissection usually holds about as much appeal as taking a skinny dip in a bath full of female pythons

Gary Marshall When Trainspotting rapidly grew from underground publishing success story to zeitgeist-surfing, underworld-soundtracked cultural event, Irvine Welsh was described as a spokesman for a generation and the

Chris Mitchell meets Bertie Marshall, the original psychoboy When does a debut underground experimental novel featuring a stomach-churning mix of depraved sex, hideous death, wanton coprophilia and insane genetic mutation gain critical praise from

Chris Mitchell encounters the age and guile of political satirist P.J. O’Rourke   the American political satirist P.J. O’Rourke recently published Age And Guile, which gathers together previously uncollected

Bethan Roberts watches the transformation of the American-Italian man, from The Godfather to Saturday Night Fever With The Godfather recently re-released in a new print, Don Corleone and his family are back on our screens, shovelling spaghetti into