A few weeks ago it looked like this column might have to be rechristened Feather Duster Jobs of the Month. The High Court judgment that The Telegraph pay £65,000 in damages over a “spiteful” book review would, we panicked, lead to a climate of fear on Grub Street, with literary editors terrified to publish anything but the most simpering eulogies.
We needn’t have worried.
James Lasdun on House of Holes by Nicholson Baker (Guardian)
“… a completely ridiculous book, whether you read it as camp parody or straight smut. The real story here is why the cleverly observant author of works such as The Mezzanine and Room Temperature has chosen to publish something at once so daft and so half-hearted. He calls it an “Entertainment” but “Wank Book” would have been more accurate.”
Jenni Russell on Honey Money by Catherine Hakim (Sunday Times)
“Selling the sex you don’t personally want to have as the route to personal development, confidence and happiness? Driving merciless bargains with men for every erotic encounter? If this is what counts as intellectual discovery at the London School of Economics, or Allen Lane, who publish Hakim, I fear for the future both of universities and of serious books.
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