Sunday 7 September 2008

 

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Clemency Burton-Hill
Clemency Burton-Hill

Clemency suggests


The Northern Clemency

Sounds of the Seventies

by Philip Hensher
Fourth Estate, 738pp, £17.99,
Simon Baker
Tuesday, 1st April 2008

Simon Baker on Philip Hensher's new book

James Joyce once claimed never to have met a bore, a consciousness-raising statement which passes the burden of failure on to the accuser: you will find a person boring only if you fail to look in sufficient detail, beyond surface generalities. In The Northern Clemency, an early contender for novel of the year, Philip Hensher looks in detail at a small group of people over a generation, and in doing so presents the great drama and inexhaustible wonder of ordinary life.

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