Malin Hay

Malin Hay is an editor at the LRB.

Paper Cuts

Malin Hay, 24 March 2022

TheLRB is printed on a matte lightweight coated paper. The specifications are exact: it needs to be heavier than newsprint, resistant to heat and the effects of ageing, and good at reproducing colour. It is called ‘improved newsprint’: the paper quality is slightly higher and the ink doesn’t come off on the reader’s hands. Early on, the LRB did use newsprint; in...

On the Sofa: ‘Russian Doll’

Malin Hay, 12 May 2022

SeasonOne of Russian Doll, Netflix’s high-concept comedy about a woman who spends her 36th birthday dying over and over again, ends with Natasha Lyonne’s Nadia Vulvokov marching in a ghoulish Mardi Gras parade to Love’s ‘Alone Again Or’. The second series opens with her striding through the streets of New York accompanied by Depeche Mode’s...

BookTok

Malin Hay, 19 January 2023

At theend of the 20th century, Mills and Boon changed its look. The genteel bodice-unlacers of the 1950s, hardbacks with titles like Inherit My Heart and Journey to Love, gave way in the 1970s to colourful paperbacks sporting a painting of a busty blonde and her hulking Burt Lancaster. Then, as their contents turned towards erotica, the covers became more upfront. Categories were...

Man as Mindfulness App: Naoise Dolan

Malin Hay, 7 September 2023

In​ the post-marriage era, what happens to the marriage plot? The marriage rate halved between 1991 and 2019, but fiction can’t shake its fondness for the will they/won’t they question, for love triangles and dilemmas. In her second novel, Naoise Dolan updates the form for the 21st century, recognising that for the perpetual teenagers of the 2020s, a wedding is just an arbitrary...

This Singing Thing: On Barbra Streisand

Malin Hay, 12 September 2024

There’s​ an old joke. ‘A man was choking to death in a restaurant and Barbra Streisand was sitting at the next table. She rushed over and did the Heimlich manoeuvre and saved his life. Next day the headline read: Barbra Streisand Takes the Food Right Out of a Person’s Mouth.’ Streisand repeats the joke in her autobiography, My Name Is Barbra, to explain why she felt a...

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