Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Saturday

Ian Thomson

Bookends: Saving JFK

Stephen King’s latest novel is a time-travel fantasy about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. At almost 750 pages, 11.22.63 is drawn-out even by blockbuster standards. Critics have bemoaned its surfeit of period detail (bobby socks, Hula Hoops, big-finned cars). I rather enjoyed it. King, now an august-looking 64, is a writer of towering cleverness, whose fiction manages to appeal to a reading public both popular and serious. Much of what passes these days for literary fiction is mere creative writing. Give me genre fiction (John le Carré, Martin Cruz Smith) any day. A fiction without a story — Kings knows — is scarcely worth its weight in paper. Before

Marcus Berkmann

Nothing on paper

On the subject of e-readers, I suspect the world population divides neatly into two halves. On one side of the chasm, hell will freeze over and Accrington Stanley will win the FA Cup before anyone will even touch one. And on the other, that looks like fun, can I have one for Christmas? I was a member of the first group — in fact, its president and hon. secretary — until offered a Kobo for free, complete with Penguin’s new range of dedicated e-books. Like all sensible publishers, Penguin has already dipped its corporate toe in the e-book market, but this new range of ‘Shorts’ and ‘Specials’ is different, in

Paul Johnson

A gimlet eye

We should be grateful to families which encourage the culture of writing letters, and equally vital, the keeping of them. Leopold Mozart, for instance, taught his son not only music but correspondence, and as a result we have 1,500 pages of letters which tell us everything we know of interest about the genius. His younger contemporary Jane Austen also came from a postman’s knock background. We have 164 of her letters, from January 1796, when she was 21, to the eve of her death in 1817. Some have been cut by the anxious family, and some suppressed altogether, but the remainder are pure gold. As in her novels, she never

Lewis Jones

Settling old scores | 10 December 2011

As a boy, Brian Sewell was unimpressed by opera but enraptured by pantomime which, he reveals in Outsider, sowed in him ‘an undying ambition, never fulfilled, to play the Widow Twanky in Aladdin’. Panto’s loss has been art criticism’s gain for, his tremendous erudition and exquisite prose aside, Sewell is surely the funniest art critic of our time, and easily the campest. In his ‘Prelude’ he remarks that he has ‘dug deep into indiscretion’, and ‘some may say that I have dug deeper still into prurience’. They would have a point. The first chapter, which is about his mother, or ‘principal demon’,  sets the tone. She ‘had, I think, as

Peter Parker

The greatest show on earth | 10 December 2011

Jessica Douglas-Home’s aptly titled book is based on the diaries of her grandmother Lilah Wingfield, who attended the Delhi Durbar in 1911 and then spent some weeks touring India. It is a glimpse of Empire from a privileged position since Lilah was the daughter of a viscount and the grand-daughter of an earl, brought up at Powerscourt Castle in Ireland and spending her summers at Holkham Hall in Norfolk. She sat in the grandstand for ‘Distinguished Spectators’ at the Durbar and was the guest of several Indian rulers during her tour. She did not, however, ‘share the assumption of superiority that afflicted many of the officials of the Raj’, her

Molly Guinness

Don’t mention the war

It wasn’t easy being the daughter of the artist Avigdor Arikha. In this memoir, Alba Arikha mixes teenage fury with glimpses of her godfather Samuel Beckett and a fragmented account of her father’s experiences of the Holocaust. Avigdor Arikha and his wife, the poet Anne Atik, surrounded themselves with the intelligentsia of Paris and drove their daughter mad: ‘I resent their purity and knowledge. Their values and morals. My father’s anger. My mother’s goodness.’ Avigdor Arikha was an irascible, dismissive and earnestly didactic father. Alba paid no attention when he tried to teach her about the Sumerians; she would not stay quiet when he discussed art and politics with his

Philip Ziegler

Voyages of discovery

Roger Louis is an American professor from the University of Texas at Austin who knows more about the history of the British Empire than any other two academics put together. When the Oxford University Press embarked on its mammoth history of the Empire the general editor they chose —to the chagrin of certain professors from the Commonwealth — was Roger Louis. Among his other responsibilities is the British Studies seminar, which was founded at Austin 36 years ago. But Professor Louis is not the university’s only attraction. The Harry Ransom Center houses one of the most, if not the most, important collection of modern literary manuscripts in the English-speaking world.

Dan Jones

A beautiful bloody world

The half-millennium or so that followed the division of the Carolingian empire in 843 AD was a time of profound social and political change in Europe. Kingdoms were established, new forms of law and theories of power were developed and military technology and tactics were revolutionised. Relations between church and state were transformed. The emerging European states developed new cultural identities, while western Christendom as a whole also began to define and assert itself against the Islamic states in the Middle East and north Africa, and the ailing remnants of the Byzantine empire to the east. By the middle of the 15th century, the various kingdoms of Europe were strong,

Jonathan Mirsky

Lifelong death wish

In February 2009, in a review in these pages of Stefan Zweig’s unfinished novel, The Post Office Girl, I wrote: ‘Here surely is what Joseph Conrad meant when he wrote that above all he wanted his readers “to see.’’  In The Post Office Girl Zweig explores the details of everyday life in language that pierces both brain and heart.’ Especially the details of loneliness, I should have added. Intimations of suicide darken this novel, and in 1942, with the manuscript incomplete, Zweig, age 60, and his much younger second wife, Lotte, poisoned themselves in a small Brazilian town and died in bed with her embracing him. It is telling that

Jonathan Keates

Wizard of the Baroque

Not content with being the greatest sculptor of his age and one of its most gifted architects, Gian Lorenzo Bernini had some talent as a painter and draftsman. Surviving self-portraits reveal him as the possessor of a positively overstated physique du role. In its most youthful incarnation the face has an air of presumption and entitlement which adulthood will darken with a combativeness that is almost wolfish. Even in the chalk drawing made around his 80th birthday (now in the Royal Collection at Windsor) the glance, under bushy white eyebrows, still smoulders and the slightly parted lips seem poised to challenge or command. Born in Naples in 1598, Bernini spent

Friday

Anita Brookner

Anita Brookner’s books of the year

My reading this year has been retrospective, dominated by Stefan Zweig, the most gentlemanly of writers. Beware of Pity, translated by the estimable Anthea Bell, remains powerfully shocking, yet classically restrained, while The Post Office Girl, in a less memorable translation, is queasily convincing. Both are published by Pushkin Press. Zweig seems unfazed by the horrors he implies, and indeed his understated worldliness is a corrective to contemporary fashions. I make exception for two of those contemporaries: Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending)  and Colin Thubron (A Mountain in Tibet), both of whom do an excellent job of dealing with fears all the more potent for being largely concealed.

David Blackburn

The art of fiction: Graham Greene

A slight change of form this week, here is a news obituary of Graham Greene (apologies for the disturbance early in the film). Greene’s reclusiveness might, I suppose, be key to the art of fiction. Piers Paul Read says that Greene’s privacy was essential if he was to continue observing the world, as writers should. On the other hand, Greene’s outspoken politics made him visible even when in solitude. The clip asks the fatuous but infectious question, is he a great writer? Auberon Waugh says yes. Anthony Burgess says no. Read says yes, but only as a novelist of doubt. Personally, I’ve always been struck that Greene wrote both the

Thursday

A.N. Wilson

A.N. Wilson’s books of the year

Rachel Campbell-Johnson’s Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer is one of those rare biographies which is a work of literature: beautifully written, overwhelmingly moving. A great art critic, with an understanding of the human heart has produced this masterpiece. It is one of the best biographies I have ever read of anyone: it captures the tragedy of Palmer’s life, and brings out the shimmering glory, the iridescent secrets of his Shoreham phase. Matthew Sturgis’s When in Rome: 2,000 Years of Roman Sightseeing is a totally original way of writing about the inexhaustible subject of Rome. Each chapter represents a different era of taste, from ancient to modern

Mark Mason

Giving up on a book

Hate to get all Peter Mandelson on you, but I’ve decided I’m a fighter not a quitter. When it comes to books, that is. I hate giving up on them. No matter how dense the prose, how teakish the characters, how convoluted the structure, I have to plough on to the bitter endpage. And sometime it is bitter; you finish the book as unimpressed as you were at page 20, thinking ‘there go a few hours of my life I’ll never get back’. But often you warm to the book, feeling glad you persisted. Those are the experiences that inspire, that make you a plougher. Is it the right way

Wednesday

Charlotte Moore

Charlotte Moore’s books of the year

Jane Shilling’s The Stranger in the Mirror is an essay on what happens to the narrative arc of a woman’s life when she reaches middle age. It is as deeply felt as it is witty and elegant. Henry’s Demons, by father and son Patrick and Henry Cockburn, provides the most compelling insight into schizophrenia that I’ve come across. As Good as God, As Clever as the Devil would have appalled its subject, the intellectually gifted, sexually tormented wife of the Victorian Archbishop Benson, but Rodney Bolt mines a rich archival vein and transcends gossip. First published in 1946, We Are Besieged, Barbara Fitzgerald’s charming novel of an Anglo-Irish family in

Fleur Macdonald

Shelf Life: Jeffrey Archer

Jeffrey Archer is on this week’s Shelf Life. He lets us know what practical gift he’d give a lover for Christmas (apart from his latest bestseller Only Time Will Tell) and what spotting the Labour Manifesto on someone’s shelf might make him do… 1) What are you reading at the moment? Boomerang by Michael Lewis   2) As a child, what did you read under the covers? Ian Fleming   3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one? A Time to Love and a Time to Die, Erich Maria Remarque   4) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year and

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Jeffrey Sachs interview: The Price of Civilization

The Occupy camp outside St Paul’s received an eminent visitor last night. The economist Jeffrey Sachs dropped by to meet the London branch of the movement that is ‘changing American debate’. Sachs sees Occupy as an expression of the frustration at inequality and unfairness that is the subject of his latest book, The Price of Civilization.   In 260 pages of fluent prose, Sachs describes the cynicism that has overcome what he calls ‘my America’. In a grubby office at the LSE, he tells me: ‘I grew up in the era of John and Robert Kennedy and they brought a lot of purpose to public life and lot of idealism,

Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson’s books of the year

The most nourishing book I have read this year is Armand d’Angour’s The Greeks and the New: Novelty in Ancient Greek Imagination and Experience. The author teaches classics at Jesus College, Oxford. He plays the piano beautifully, and also the cello, can talk fluently on art and literature and so is the ideal person to write this book, which ranges across the whole flow of culture. We all know that the ancient Greeks were the first to do many things, but d’Angour examines the underlying question: what did they think about novelty and why, given their conservatism in so many areas of conduct, did they regard it as desirable? His

Monday

Anna Baddeley

Dauntless into the future

Gentleman shopkeeper James Daunt has given a cringeworthy interview to the Independent where he calls Amazon ‘a ruthless, money-making devil, the consumer’s enemy’. I wouldn’t be surprised if the manger of “Quills ‘R’ Us” had said something similar about William Caxton in 1476. Poor James Daunt. He clearly had a certain degree of business acumen to set up his successful mini-chain of London bookshops, but since taking over Waterstone’s he has yet to prove he knows what he’s doing. His only real achievement so far is to get rid of that notorious three-for-two. If I were a Waterstone’s bookseller reading the Independent interview online, my next click would be straight

David Blackburn

Across the literary pages: Great reputations

The poet Christopher Logue has died aged 85. The obituaries make for fascinating reading. For instance, did you know that the author of War Music also edited Pseuds’ Corner and collated the True Stories column in Private Eye? Or that he was an occasional actor? Aren’t some people almost too blessed? Perhaps, but Logue’s beginnings were difficult. He joined the Black Watch in 1944 and was court martialled during a fractious tour of Palestine in 1946; he was imprisoned. Determined to write, he travelled to Paris in the early ‘50s, where he fell in with the expat writers’ crowd: that band of artistic Anglo-Saxons who fled the suffocating British Isles after the war. His career