Book Reviews

It’s a dangerous business: rereading books you loved first time round. I found myself with some time on my hands last week and so returned to The Hare With Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal’s award winning family history, told through an elaborate collection of netsuke, which he inherited from his great uncle. The book was published to fevered critical acclaim. There is evidence of this on the copy I bought last week. The inside and back covers are crammed with luminaries gushing superlatives. It is masterpiece, everyone said. I agreed with them then, but, having taken a more leisurely second read, I’m not so sure. De Waal’s book is certainly

Three clichés walk onto a stage and start telling bad jokes. Welcome to Love, Love, Love, the newish play by Mike Bartlett, playing at the Royal Court until 3rd June. It is 1967, on the night of the first global TV show, when the Beatles sang All You Need is Love. Still reading? Here are the characters. Henry is Jimmy Porter, but 10 years out of date. His younger brother Kenneth, a self-absorbed Oxonian, has pitched camp on his sofa for the summer. Henry is planning a date with Sandra, a tarty waif, also down from Oxford. While Henry’s out buying fish and chips, Sonia and Kenny get stoned, cop-off

Hilary Mantel dominates the bank holiday books pages. Bring Up The Bodies, the sequel to the Booker winning Wolf Hall, will be published this Thursday, and the acclaim has already begun. Mantel has been interviewed for the Telegraph by the renowned Tudor historian Thomas Penn. They talked of history and fiction, very carefully and very slowly: Penn says that Mantel speaks in ‘perfect paragraphs’. The Telegraph also carries an extract from Bring Up The Bodies. It has the searing pace and all the subtleties that characterised Wolf Hall. Cromwell travels to see Katherine of Aragon, and the two speak of the king’s latest woman problem, in this case Anne Boleyn’s

You know the script by now: the world’s economy is being built by the BRICs. It has been the standard analysis for more than a decade, but flailing western countries have come to place evermore trust in the enterprise of Brazil, Russia, India and China. But have expectations become excessive? Ruchir Sharma, author of a new book called Breakout Nations, believes so. He argues that the last decade was exceptional and that we need to recalibrate our approach to emerging markets. He identifies a number of nations which are ripe to breakout in the next few years, including Indonesia and Nigeria. His economic case is compelling, but its political underpinnings

I’ve realised what the perfect non-fiction book is. You’d think that as someone who writes non-fiction books for a living I’d be excited by this discovery, and would even now be scribbling feverishly away so as to hit the top of the bestseller lists before anyone else has the same idea. Trouble is, the perfect non-fiction book has already been written. In 1955. And once a year ever since then, for that matter. And yes, every year it does hit the top of the bestseller lists. It’s the Guinness Book of Records. When I wrote novels, publishers used to assuage my worries about a lack of reviews by pointing out

Jeremy Clarke, our Low Life correspondent, has sobered up to answer our impertinent questions this week. His latest book, One Middle Aged Man in Search of The Point, is available in hardback. 1) What are you reading at the moment? Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader 2) As a child, what did you read under the covers? Richmal Crompton, E Nesbit 3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one? No book has so far, but a Dickens journalism piece called A Walk in the Workhouse usually makes my eyes prick a bit 4) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year

Some war veterans slip back into civilian life with reasonable ease, stiff of limb, stiff of upper lip. If at first it’s a case of concealment and self-restraint, there’s at least some chance that play-acting can infiltrate reality. The protagonist of Toni Morrison’s new novel, Home, is called Frank Money. He has just returned to his native town in Georgia from fighting in the Korean War, and discovered that he has no true home. He’s always known he has no money. He tries to overcome the wartime memories he’s carried with him from Korea, but when does a coping mechanism become just a lie? And a lie yet another thing

‘A Short Song of Congratulation’  Long-expected one and twenty Ling’ring year, at last is flown, Pomp and Pleasure, Pride and Plenty Great Sir John, are all your own. Loosen’d from the Minor’s tether, Free to mortgage or to sell, Wild as wind, and light as feather Bid the slaves of thrift farewel. Call the Bettys, Kates, and Jennys Ev’ry name that laughs at Care, Lavish of your Grandsire’s guineas, Show the Spirit of an heir. All that prey on vice and folly Joy to see their quarry fly, Here the Gamester light and jolly There the Lender grave and sly. Wealth, Sir John, was made to wander, Let it wander