It was a quiet weekend on the literary front. The Sundays bristled with reviews, most of them about Murakami’s 1Q84. The voluminous novel has already acquired the sobriquet ‘epic masterpiece’ and breathless weekend reviewers have conferred more epithets on it: read Anthony Cummins in the Telegraph, although he sounds a note of caution, urging the reader not to “think too hard” about “this mammoth shaggy dog story”. Cummins also says that this is perhaps a publishing event masquerading as a literary event, which qualifies his enthusiasm a little more.
The chorus of gentle criticism builds in the Sunday Times, where Robert Collins notes (£) that the worlds of 1Q84 are not developed much beyond their “sketchy, initial concept”. Writing in this week’s Spectator, Philip Hensher perhaps goes furthest of all, describing Murakami’s plot and style as “dismayingly slim”. Hensher concludes that the master has had something of an off-day. He says:
‘What I missed were those exquisite turns, and lines and delicacy of mood and expression on the small scale that make Dance Dance Dance and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle so irresistible. It is regrettable to see such a wonderful novelist abandon all but the very broadest effects.’
A few other books got a look in. John Baxter’s biography of J.G. Ballard gets the thumbs down from the inexhaustible Hensher. “The Inner Man is mistitled, and Ballard remains just as public, just as hidden, as he wanted to be in his lifetime,” Hensher writes in the Telegraph. Meanwhile, the Guardian has been speaking to Joan Didion, whose latest novel, Blue Nights, again concerns her bereavement. The 76-year-old Didion concedes that the book has taken its toll on her health. And finally, Ellen Feldman is in London promoting Next to Love, her new novel about the lasting impact of the Second World War on Small Town America. It is being described by some critics as an American version of War and Peace, and Feldman describes it as testament to her “heritage” – a codification of oral stories and local lore.
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