Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Saturday

Violet Hudson

A choice of first novels | 28 July 2012

A re-telling of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, Francesca Segal’s debut The Innocents (Chatto, £14.99) takes the action to contemporary Golders Green. The daily minutiae of Jewish life are documented, from eating challah at Shabbat to the moments preceding a circumcision, alongside more sweeping statements: ‘For a people whose history is one of exodus and eviction,’ says Segal about ritual meals, ‘the luxury of repetition is precious.’ Both the cosiness and insularity of the community are described, particularly as it comes together in moments of celebration: ‘Friday night dinner’ is one of the most evocative phrases in the vocabulary of any Jew — up there in significance with ‘my

Wynn Wheldon

A Gawain for our times

As a subject for literature, virtue and its celebration is fairly unfashionable. This is particularly true in Britain, where we like to maintain ironic detachment. This perhaps explains why Robert B. Parker and his private eye, Spenser, have never found their way into regular dinner-party chat on this side of the Atlantic. In America, as this festschrift demonstrates, Parker is seen as the natural successor to Hammett, Chandler and Ross Macdonald, and Spenser the latest in a line that runs from the Continental Op through Sam Spade to Marlowe and Lew Archer. In his preface to the Fairie Queene Edmund Spenser wrote that his aim was ‘to fashion a gentleman

Harriet Sergeant

Out on the town

In the middle of last summer’s riots, Mash, a member of a South London gang I have befriended, phoned me. He was standing outside a shop that was being looted. ‘It’s the funniest thing, Harry man,’ he declared. ‘This day I can go anywhere in London and there is no beef.’ Mash is usually confined by gang rivalry to a few streets around his estate. More astonishing even than the opportunity to loot was mixing with other young men without fear of being stabbed or shot. For the majority of Londoners like me, the riots proved terrifying. For Mash, it was the first time he had felt safe in his

Peter Phillips

All to play for

Impressed by Alethea Hayter’s A Sultry Month: Scenes of London Literary Life in 1846 (1965), which describes the close relations between Benjamin Haydon, the Carlyles and the Brownings in the summer of 1846, Hugh Macdonald has written a similarly ‘horizontal’ and highly readable biography of intersecting musicians in 1853. His theme is the relations, not always close, between Brahms, Berlioz, Liszt, Schumann, Wagner and a host of lesser figures in that year. As he says, a number of other years would have qualified for such a microscope, but this particular one saw all these principals meeting at an unusually charged moment: the birth of a major argument between the adherents

Philip Hensher

At the rising of the sun

Niall Ferguson, in his impressive and exuberant book Civilization, published last year, sought to explain why Western civilisation triumphed in the centuries after the Renaissance with reference to six factors. He identified them as competition, science, property, medicine consumption and work, or a particular work ethic. These historical tours d’horizon are never without their critics, and Ferguson’s confident account of what one had thought an undoubted historical phenomenon found a memorable one in the  pages of the London Review of Books. The London-based writer Pankaj Mishra dismissed what he saw as a triumphalist tone, and refused to accept that those eastern civilisations which are now in the ascendant have learnt

Robert Chandler

On the verge of extinction

This book, by the architectural historian Richard Davies, is remarkable in many ways — for the importance of its subject matter, for the excellence and variety of the many photographs, and for the imaginative choice of the accompanying texts. The fruit of ten years of long and difficult journeys in the far north of European Russia, it is a labour of love. It is also extremely informative. Russian wooden churches are very varied; because it is difficult to travel over such often boggy terrain, each region tended to develop its own specific architectural features. All, however, are built from logs of hewn pine; the carpenters used neither saws nor hammers

Friday

J P O'Malley

Don Paterson interview

Don Paterson was born in 1963 in Dundee. He moved to London in 1984 to work as a jazz musician, and eventually began to write poetry. In 1993, Faber published his debut collection, Nil Nil, which won the Forward prize. In total, he’s published seven collections and three books of aphorisms. Paterson has won the prestigious T.S. Eliot prize for poetry twice. Other awards include: the Whitbread prize, and The Geoffrey Faber memorial prize. He received an OBE in 2008, and teaches poetry at the University of St Andrews.  His recently published Selected Poems, covers a remarkable career that spans twenty years, ranging from the half-dead Scottish towns and deserted

Peter Jones

Pindar vs Boris

Boris will recite an ode in honour of the Olympics – of course he is. He commissioned Dr Armand D’Angour, an Oxford Greats don, to compose the ode in the style of Pindar. Peter Jones, our Ancient and Modern columnist, wrote about Boris’ enterprise in this week’s issue of the magazine. We reproduce it here: Dr Armand D’Angour (Jesus College, Oxford) has composed a brilliant Ode in ancient Greek to welcome the Olympic Games to London. It is called a ‘Pindaric’ Ode, but as Dr D’Angour knows very well, the ancient Greek poet Pindar (518­-438 BC) wrote very differently. Pindar was commissioned to compose Odes that celebrated winning: not the

Thursday

Mark Mason

The British invented the Olympics

Is there any chance that you might, at any point in the next three weeks, be talking to anyone? About anything, in any setting, for any length of time? Then you’d better get a copy of The British Olympics by Martin Polley. Because it won’t matter what the primary purpose of your conversation is supposed to be — you will, in addition, be obliged to talk Olympics. Just a given, I’m afraid. Accepting that, you may as well have something interesting to say. And Polley’s book narrates a very interesting story: the one of how Britain invented the modern Games. It’s especially good to have this story up your sleeve

Wednesday

David Blackburn

A hard-going Booker longlist

Here is the Booker longlist, announced earlier this afternoon: The Yips by Nicola Barker (Fourth Estate) The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman (Sceptre) Philida by André Brink (Harvill Secker) The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (Myrmidon Books) Skios by Michael Frayn (Faber & Faber) The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (Doubleday) Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (And Other Stories) Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate) The Lighthouse by Alison Moore (Salt) Umbrella by Will Self (Bloomsbury) Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil (Faber & Faber) Communion Town by Sam Thompson (Fourth Estate) As expected, the judges are clearly determined to avoid last year’s

The Spectator

Shelf Life: Anne Enright

Winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize, Anne Enright is on this week’s Shelf Life. She tells us which book qualifies as the first satisfying satire on the Irish boom, gives us a long list of the parties in literature she would like to have attended and reveals which is the only book by Norman Mailer that wouldn’t make her run for the hills. Her latest novel is The Forgotten Waltz and she will be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Sunday 19th August at 18:30. www.edbookfest.co.uk 1) What are you reading at the moment? Graham Greene, would you believe: A Burnt Out Case. Also A.M. Homes May

Tuesday

Nicola Soloman

The threat to authors and readers

Authors are getting cross. Generally a polite bunch, authors are alarmed at the ongoing, serious threats to libraries (which they continue to campaign against) and also the knock-on effect for the lowest-earning authors. The Government is encouraging libraries to replace paid staff with volunteers. Such “community libraries” currently account for less than 1 per cent of British libraries but their numbers are increasing. The concept chimes with the Big Society philosophy and the need to make the most of shrinking budgets. However, there has been little advice or oversight from DCMS as councils rush to increase the use of volunteers. Authors; heavy users of libraries as well as ‘suppliers’, are

David Blackburn

Compromised by not compromising

‘In a relationship, when does the art of compromise become compromising?’ Thus spoke Carrie Bradshaw. Such knowledge suggests that I have passed her tipping point; my compromises have compromised me. But, then again, one can’t dissent from Robert Louis Stevenson’s view that ‘compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer’, especially when it comes to relationships. There are worse fates than having to do the washing-up occasionally to a backing of unwanted telly. Yesterday evening, I had hoped to watch highlights of England’s humiliation at the hands of the South African cricket team, but, alas, was forced to settle for Eastenders. Such is life. In fact, Eastenders wasn’t all that bad.

Monday

Anna Baddeley

Across the literary pages: Ned Beauman

London doesn’t really have a literary hipster scene, but if it did, Ned Beauman would be centre stage. The 27-year-old novelist may look like he’s crawled out of an evolution of man diagram, but he’s very clever and very trendy and, despite having gone to Cambridge, knows a lot about ketamine. His show-offy but energetic first book, Boxer Beetle, came out in 2010 to deafening acclaim and earnt him a six-figure publishing deal, unheard of in these austere times unless you’re a dog who’s won a talent contest. After spending a couple of years hanging out with cool, arty people in Brooklyn and Berlin, Beauman is back in town to

Austen Saunders

The delights of sin

Epigram 7 from The letting of humours blood in the head-vaine ‘Speak gentlemen, what shall we do to day? Drink some brave health upon the Dutch carouse? Or shall we to the Globe and see a play? Or visit Shoreditch for a bawdy house? Let’s call for cards or dice, and have a game. To sit thus idle is both sin and shame.’ This speaks Sir Revel , furnished out with fashion, From dish-crowned hat unto the shoe’s square toe, That haunts a whore-house but for recreation, Plays but at dice to cony catch or so, Drinks drunk in kindness, for good fellowship, Or to a play goes but some

Sunday

The Spectator

Bookbenchers: Jamie Reed MP

This week, Jamie Reed, the Labour MP for Copeland and Cumbria and shadow health minister, is in the hot seat. He is big on books about American politics, and reads poetry occasionally. 1) Which books are at your bedside table at the moment? Most books now on my iPad… but Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 is always present on the bedside table. Have just begun – finally – Team of Rivals. 2) Which book would you read to your children? They have different tastes. The Fantastic Mr Fox is always loved, along with The Hobbit. 3) Which literary character would you most like to be? Nick Clegg…

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Wanted, books to read

I’m off for my annual digital detox: no ConservativeHome, no PoliticsHome, just my wife’s family home in Stockholm and swapping my Blackberry for a primitive mobile with a battery that lasts a week. But before I sign off completely, I’d like to abuse my position to ask CoffeeHousers for book recommendations. I’ve done this for three years now, and each year the results pretty much give me a reading list for the next 12 months. I’ve only now finished the last of summer 2010’s suggestions (Exodus, by Leon Uris.) I’m midway through Max Hastings brilliant All Hell Let Loose, which I’m interspersing with the restored World at War on DVD

Penelope Lively

Bookends: Deftly orchestrated chaos

The headings set the scene: ‘Last Tango in Balham, in which I meet Marlon Brando on the dance floor of Surbiton Assembly Rooms but thankfully do not have to do anything with packet of country life.’ The essential premise in Melissa Kite’s breezy new collection Real Life: One Woman’s Guide to Love, Men and Other Disasters (Constable, £7.99) is: single girl (of advancing years) desperately seeks man and invariably ends up with the wrong one. Plus a great deal more of mundane affronts to do with TV remote controls that won’t work, Lambeth Council’s wheelie- bin regulations, and the challenge of filling in a passport application form. Real life. Possibly.

William Leith

Torn in two by Tuggy Tug

This is a book about what we, as a society, should do with hoodies — the familiar hooded young men, black and white, who rob, stab, shoot and sell drugs. Its author, Harriet Sergeant, is a middle-aged woman who works for the Centre for Policy Studies, a right-wing think tank. Should we hug these people? Or should we punish them? If I’ve understood her correctly, Sergeant thinks we hug them too much when they’re young, which means we must punish them for the rest of their lives when they get older. Actually, that’s not quite right. As a society, we don’t exactly hug young hoodies — we just don’t have

Ben Hamilton

You can run, but you can’t hide

Stuart Evers’ debut short-story collection was called Ten Stories About Smoking, but even readers who are aware of this might be astonished by the multitude of burning cigarettes in his first novel, If This is Home. His characters smoke constantly, as if they are in the Forties film noir Out of the Past, where Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer are apparently incapable of breathing except through cigarette filters. Evers’ novel, also in common with Out of the Past, deals with grim secrets and failed personal reinvention. When Mark Wilkinson flees England and his non-descript northern town for New York City he seems at first to be leaving only the scraps