Book Reviews

Patrick Gale’s new novel could be read as a companion work to his hugely successful Notes from an Exhibition, and in fact, in a satisfying twist, some characters and even objects slip from the latter into this novel. Notes from an Exhibition centred around the character of Rachel Kelly, whose mental instability and solipsistic devotion to her art left a painful mark on her family. The ‘perfectly good man’ of this title is a vicar, Barnaby Johnson, as kind, gentle and balanced as Rachel Kelly was not, yet with the same sense of vocation — in this case, selfless service to the church — that moulds and in its own

– Hong Kong South Korean author Kyung-sook Shin has become the first woman to win the Man Asian Literary Prize for her novel Please Look After Mother, which tells the story of a family’s heartbreaking search  for their mum after she goes missing from a Seoul subway station. During a black-tie dinner hosted at the Conrad hotel in Hong Kong, BBC Special Correspondent and chair of this year’s judging  panel Razia Iqbal announced the winner of Asia’s most prestigious prize for literature. She said the reason they chose Shin’s book is because it is “an amazing story”,  beautifully written and poignantly told,  through a compelling structure of different narrative voices.

It is, of course, entirely appropriate that the estate of Bram Stoker should choose to mark the 100th anniversary of the author’s death this year with a series of events, such as the publication of Bram Stoker’s Lost Journal, and a special edition of Dracula.    With other writers you might decide to commemorate their birth, or the date of their greatest work. But death — and in particular the way it needn’t stand in the way of a man’s career — was the underpinning theme of Bram Stoker’s most famous novel. And with the popularity of vampires at an all time high in the early years of 21st century,

The political battle over library closures has intensified. Earlier this morning, shadow culture secretary Dan Jarvis chastised libraries minister Ed Vaizey for being the ‘Dr Beeching of libraries’. Jarvis said that Vaizey should not be so ‘short-sighted’ as to permit 600 libraries to shut in England. He urged the government to intervene to save these ‘vital assets’, adding that not to do so would make a ‘mockery of the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act’. The Act allows the secretary of state to intervene if local authorities are in breach of their statutory requirement to provide a ‘comprehensive and efficient’ library service in local communities. Library campaigners have already demanded that Jeremy

From ‘Prothalamion’ There in a meadow by the river’s side A flock of nymphs I chancéd to espy, All lovely daughters of the flood thereby, With goodly greenish locks all loose untied As each had been a bride; And each one had a little wicker basket Made of fine twigs, entrailéd curiously. In which they gather’d flowers to fill their flasket, And with fine fingers cropt full feateously The tender stalks on high. Of every sort which in that meadow grew They gather’d some; the violet, pallid blue, The little daisy that at evening closes, The virgin lily and the primrose true, With store of vermeil roses, To deck their