Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Granta Best of Young British Novelists 4 – a review

This year marks the fourth Granta ‘Best of Young British novelists’, begun in 1983, but it is the first time that an audio version has been produced. Granta’s American editor, John Freeman, introduces the collection:  three complete stories and 17 excerpts from work-in-progress from all 20 novelists, half of them read by the authors themselves. The result is a tremendous extra dimension of reality. Sunjeev Sahota quotes Salman Rushdie: ‘To understand just one life you have to swallow the world.’ These 20 novelists, including Sahota, have certainly done so,  with settings including Somalia, old Beijing, drug experimentation on the Burma-Thai border, Yorkshire in flood, Ghana and, in a quarter of

Saving Italy, by Robert M. Edsel – a review

During the civil war, the Puritan iconoclast William Dowsing recorded with satisfaction his destructive visit in 1644 to the parish church of Sudbury in Suffolk: ‘We brake down a picture of God the Father, 2 crucifixes and pictures of Christ, about an hundred in all.’ The Taleban’s decision in 2001 to blow up two gigantic statues of Buddha in the Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan was more spectacular but not different in kind. War gives licence to such subterranean urges. In an order issued exactly three centuries after Dowsing’s expedition, General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, supreme Allied commander in the Mediterranean, explained why great art needed to be protected. ‘Works of

The People’s Songs, by Stuart Maconie – a review

For Stuart Maconie fans, this book might sound as if it’ll be his masterpiece. In his earlier memoirs and travelogues, he’s proved himself a fine writer: sharp, funny, tender and thoughtful — often all at the same time. In his previous book to this, Hope and Glory, he made a creditable if slightly heart-on-sleeve attempt at British social history. And, as anybody who’s listened to his radio shows will know, few people combine such a serious knowledge and love of pop music with such a refreshing lack of snootiness about it. Not only that, but in the introduction here he tells us that he’s always wanted to write ‘a reliable,

The Long Shadow, by Mark Mills – a review

Mark Mills is known for his historical and literary crime novels, including The Savage Garden, The Information Officer and House of the Hanged. The Long Shadow is written in a different mode. It is set in a highly recognisable present; it is a clever, teasing hybrid of genres (psychological thriller, dark comedy, Pardoner’s Tale and dystopia); and it is fraught with tensions about money, class and the super-rich. The protagonist, Ben, is a well-nigh washed up screenwriter in his early forties. His wife has fallen in love with a successful businessman; Ben has been forced out into a seedy flat in a demoralising part of London. He passes the time

Accidental dictators

Two flashpoints have emerged recently, threatening regional wars and pitting global powers against each other. They happen to be run by accidental dynastic heirs, each representing a new generation of dictatorship whereby sons inherited jobs which they might never have wanted. One is North Korea, which draws in the competing wills of Beijing and Washington with the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific. The other is Syria, where Russia and America are holding each other in check over influence in the Middle East. Syria’s Bashar al Assad  began his career as a competent junior ophthalmologist, training at the Western Eye Hospital in London, until he was plucked away in 2000

J.K. Rowling’s “Robert Galbraith” trick reveals nothing of how publishers really treat unknown novelists

Is it okay for struggling authors to talk about promotion and marketing and how they are dealt with by publishers? Apparently so.  The aspiring novelist Robert Galbraith knew rejection. His first novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, was rejected by Orion and other publishers before it was printed in April by Sphere, a prestige imprint of Little Brown, one of the biggest names in fiction. He must have been beside himself when his little detective story was singled out for praise by Val McDermid, Mark Billingham and Alex Gray – all leading practitioners in the genre. The icing on the cake probably came when The Times, the Mail and Publishers Weekly joined

Alexander Pope, mock-epic, modernity and misogyny

from The Rape of the Lock And now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed, Each silver vase in mystic order laid. First, robed in white, the nymph intent adores With head uncovered, the cosmetic powers. A heavenly image in the glass appears, To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears; The inferior priestess, at her altar’s side, Trembling, begins the sacred rites of pride. Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here The various offerings of the world appear; From each she nicely culls with curious toil, And decks the goddess with the glittering spoil. This casket India’s glowing gems unlocks, And all Arabia breathes from yonder box. The tortoise

The week in books | 12 July 2013

The latest issue of the Spectator is full to bursting with sparkling and varied book reviews. Here are some extracts from those reviews: Sam Leith reviews two new books (one by Douglas Hurd and Edward Young, the other by Dick Legend) that, to some extent, debunk the Tory legend of Benjamin Disraeli. ‘Disraeli…, as Hurd and Young see it, was … ‘one of the first career politicians’, for better and for worse. For better: he understood the importance of party discipline; it was on his watch that Conservative Central Office came into being to manage elections and water the grass roots, and on his watch that the parliamentary party started

The Authors XI, by The Authors Cricket Club – review

We were never going to get ‘come to the party’ or ‘a hundred and ten per cent’ from The Authors XI by The Authors Cricket Club, with a foreword by Sebastian Faulks (Bloomsbury, £16.99). Instead there’s ‘Passchendaeleian’ and ‘Ballardian’ (of pitches), ‘burst-sofa torsos’ (of themselves) and the observation that the French revolutionaries’ cry of ‘Aux armes!’ sounds uncannily like ‘howzat?!’ The team of cricketing writers tackle a chapter each, combining match reports from their 2012 season with reflections on different aspects of the game (class, broadcasting, kit, youth and so on). If you play you’ll sympathise with their need for relay fielders to get a throw from the boundary to

She Landed by Moonlight, by Carole Seymour-Jones – review

The subtitle of Carole Seymour-Jones’s quietly moving biography of the brilliant SOE agent Pearl Witherington is ‘the real Charlotte Gray’. As quickly becomes evident, the real thing was more than a shade superior. Like the fictional Gray, Witherington had determined to serve behind enemy lines in France with the dual aims of fighting the Nazi occupation of her adopted country, and being reunited with the man she loved, in Witherington’s case her fiancé, the escaped French POW Henri Cornioley. Unlike Gray, however, Witherington would quickly achieve both her public and private missions, meeting up with Henri within just days of her arrival. ‘Her story is a true romance,’ one wing

Seaweeds, by Ole G. Mouritsen – review

On 14 April each year, nori fishermen gather on a hillside overlooking Ariake Bay on Kyushu in southern Japan to pay homage to ‘the Mother of the Sea’. There is a shrine and an altar for votive offerings but this is not a religious rite. The mother in question is Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker, a Lancashire- born algae researcher who, in 1949, discovered the life-cycle of porphyra umbilicalis.  Not, perhaps, front-page news in the occident, but this was the key to the cultivation of that dark green papery wrapping around the outside of sushi that is consumed in one form or another in every Japanese household: nori. Kathleen Drew-Baker died in

The Charleston Bulletin Supplements, by Virginia Woolf and Quentin Bell

The Charleston Bulletin was a family newspaper produced between 1923 and 1927 by the teenaged Quentin Bell and his elder brother Julian — who soon dropped out, leading Quentin to recruit his aunt Virginia Woolf. At that time enjoying her most prolific period as a novelist, she collaborated with him on special issues which they called Supplements, for circulation at Christmas among the family and friends whose foibles and mishaps are chronicled in its pages. Professor David Bradshaw in his preface suggests that ‘it may not be ridiculous’ to link the ‘skittish abandon’ of the Supplements with the sense of liberation that Woolf felt in having found her fictional voice

Steerpike

Dame Gail Rebuck – tax cutter

The Queen of Publishing, Dame Gail Rebuck, abdicated earlier this week when she stood down as chairman and chief executive of Random House. Dame Gail will take up the somewhat more emeritus position of chairman of the UK arm of Penguin Random House — the literary world’s new super-group. Her Majesty will use some of her spare time to chair the Cheltenham Literary Festival. She has been making remarks about these changes over the last couple of days and Mr Steerpike was interested to learn that this firm Labour supporter, the widow of Philip Gould, is a tax cutter. She said that bookshops (which she believes to be ‘cultural showcases’) should be given tax

The history girl

Ronald Knox, found awake aged four by a nanny, was asked what he was thinking about, and he replied ‘the past’. I thought of this when reading Hunters in the Snow, since the author is so young, and the time-scale of the book so long. This is a truly dazzling first novel. Every paragraph bristles with cleverness and yet it is a warm-hearted book, at times overpoweringly moving. Its theme is nothing less than the past, and how we view it, and how it affects us. The framework of the story is the young narrator’s relationship with a reclusive, unhappily married grandfather, who is a professional historian. The substance of

The Unwinding, by George Packer – review

The Unwinding is a rather classy addition to the thriving genre of American apocalypse porn. The basic thesis can be found online in Jim Kunstler’s The Clusterfuck Nation Manifesto, which runs to a few thousand words, but over hundreds of pages George Packer gives it the full literary treatment. He signals his ambition by taking as his model the USA trilogy of John Dos Passos, which spliced mash-ups of newspaper cuttings and pop lyrics, brief lives of public figures and longer episodic biographies of obscure ones, into an indignant portrait of America in the first three decades of the 20th century. Packer’s book is non-fiction, and his ‘obscure Americans’ are

Two film stars watch some tennis. World goes mad!

The first Briton in 77 years won the Wimbledon championships on Sunday, but this is perhaps incidental; did you spot the real thing of note? That Bradley Cooper and Gerard Butler were there to watch him, and were actually laughing and talking to each other, like normal human beings? That’s the real story here! From the flurry of online activity about the sighting of the pair, you might be forgiven for thinking they had done something other than, well, just stand there watching the tennis and have a friendly chat, as all the other spectators (or those who weren’t instead scanning the crowd for well-known faces) were doing. Celeb-spotting at

Korea – the 60 year war

In the early morning hours of June 25, 1950 the opening shots of the Korean War were fired. At the time, few could have predicted how seminal this event would be in shaping world history. While the Korean War itself was only fought over a period of three years, no peace agreement was ever reached. In her new book ‘Brothers At War’, Sheila Miyoshi Jager provides a compelling historical analysis of a conflict that set the agenda for much of the Cold War.  Sheila Miyoshi Jager is Luce Associate Professor and Director of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College, Ohio. She has written extensively on modern and contemporary Korean politics

Clive James – laughing and loving

Clive James was a recurring presence in last weekend’s literary press. There was, I regret to say, a valedictory feel to the coverage. Robert McCrum, of the Guardian, was not so much suggestive as openly morbid: ‘If word of his death has been exaggerated, there’s no question, on meeting him, that he’s into injury time, with a nagging cough that punctuates our conversation.’ If those words and others like them made little impact on the reader, then the photograph of James that illustrates McCrum’s interview might. Old age looks no fun; serious illness even less so. But, James’ spirit does not seem to have been shaken by the indignities visited upon

SPECTATOR DEBATE: When did we stop caring about our national culture?

Peter Hitchens will be speaking at the next Spectator Event on 9 July, debating the motion ‘Too much immigration, too little integration?’ along with Ken Livingstone, David Goodhart, Trevor Phillips and others. Click here to book tickets. I used to go on left-wing demonstrations against Enoch Powell in the Sixties, and I’m still glad I did. I was against racial bigotry then, and I’m against it now. So it has been an interesting experience to find myself accused of ‘racism’, in many cases by people who were not born in those days. Likewise, I’m one of the few people I know who has lived, by his own choice, in more