Eurozone crisis, what eurozone crisis? According to Spanish newspaper El País, the real global emergency is the state of literary criticism. British book pages, however, won’t need bailing out any time soon — at least if these splenetic offerings are anything to go by.
Tibor Fischer on Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas, Guardian
It’s a great historical soup, with bits of this and that bobbing around, seemingly thrown in randomly by the chef — or, more succinctly, a mess. Hungary’s literature had a puritanical 1950s, a sober 1960s, and they largely missed out on all the Henry Miller, Lady Chatterley, Jean Genet, William Burroughs jazz. It’s almost as if Nádas is trying to catch up in one bound. Every time a new male character appears you fear he’s going to be wanking or investigating his foreskin in a line or two (and he will be). The only relief from cocks is the occasional intervention of some labia or a clitoris. Doubtless, Nádas has some artful justification for this, but it’s like having your face jammed in someone’s crotch — it gets exasperating very quickly, and there’s still 900 pages to go.
Rachel Cooke on 11.22.63 by Stephen King, Observer
In love with his conceit … King has delivered a self-indulgent book that is too long (a whopping 740 pages), too complicated and too barmy for words. Narrative tension, ordinarily his greatest skill, has been ruthlessly sacrificed on the altar of pedantry. I had never thought to hear myself call King boring; as a judgment, it’s like saying that PG Wodehouse isn’t funny. But there you have it: I wouldn’t have finished 11.22.63 if I hadn’t been reviewing it.
John Preston on Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford by Leslie Brody, Telegraph
The American edition of this biography comes with a quote on the cover from the San Francisco Chronicle saying that “Brody has made the world a better place by telling Mitford’s story so skilfully.” This, frankly, is bunkum. Seldom have I read a biography which so utterly fails to illuminate its subject. What attempts there are at characterisation read as though they have been lifted from a school report – “a rebellious, pent-up spirit, burdened by the world’s troubles, but always funny” – while other passages require the services of a codebreaker to disentangle them. “His castle was impenetrable,” she writes of Esmond Romilly, “defended by secret spells – charms to ward off the charms of charm.”
Phil Hogan on Mrs Fry’s Diary by ‘Mrs Stephen Fry’, Observer
If only it weren’t so inept. What sort of creature is Mrs Fry – this middle-aged housewife (called Edna) in a hat who enthuses about coffee mornings and Battenberg cake, doilies and Spam? Are we in a 1960s suburban sitcom? And if we are, why is the Frys’ lifestyle such a bizarre parody of Shameless…? … I hesitate to describe something that has probably taken literally weeks to write as tediously unfunny. After all, you do meet people who will laugh at anything. Perhaps it is enough to say that this book is one for them.
Theo Tait on The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco, Guardian
A tiring plod … the plot is stodgy and repetitive. It is hard, at times, to remember which blandly threatening puppetmaster or sinister Jesuit we are dealing with. The novel also leaves a slightly unpleasant taste in the mouth. Eco is basically a playful writer: even his best novels are little more than brilliant mechanical toys. Here, the mood of historical pastiche and learned joke comes up uncomfortably against the history of European antisemitism.
Leo Robson on Martin Amis: The Biography by Richard Bradford, New Statesman
It is neither exciting nor penetrating. It is neither coherent nor convincing. It is characterised by surreal laziness (testimonies are pasted straight on to the page) and surreal bossiness: “Keep walking and you will reach the British Leyland car plant”, “Pick up a novel by either of them . . . compare both with a work chosen at random by any other major postwar writer”. It is full of repetition, contradictions and small, avoidable errors: Bradford seems to get things slightly wrong almost as a matter of principle. It is also full of spectacularly bad writing — about spectacularly good writing.
…and David Sexton on Martin Amis: The Biography by Richard Bradford, Evening Standard
The problem isn’t that Bradford is hostile. He’s not, he’s servile. The problem is that as a biographer he is so inept. His book is unreadably poor. He can’t write for toffee … What can Martin Amis feel now, to discover that such a dimwit should be fated to be his biographer, forever first in his bibliography.
Anna Baddeley is editor of The Omnivore.
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