Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Timely Thriller

Talk about timing. Just as Robert Harris’s cautionary tale about the perils of meddling with the financial markets was hitting the shelves, Greece was teetering on the edge of default and Swiss Bank UBS announced that unauthorised trading by one of the company’s investment bankers had led to $2.3 billion worth of losses. Harris has always had a nose for the topical. His 1999 novel, Archangel, noted that curious, self-sabotaging flaw in the Russian character which yearns for a totalitarian hard man in the Kremlin; a few years later, Vladimir Putin had completed his quiet ascent to the presidency. Harris’s wonderful 2007 thriller, The Ghost, functioned as a critique of

Bookends | 1 October 2011

Political sketchwriting, like most humorous writing, is one of those things that looks easy, especially to people who would never be able to do it in a trillion years. At any one time, though, there are only a couple of sketchwriters who are any good at all, and some of us find we move papers in order to read them. I realise now I must have been a very strange teenager to turn to Frank Johnson first every morning, and now I am an even stranger man in middle age reading Simon Hoggart every morning. Send Up The Clowns (Guardian Books, £8.99) is a selection of his sketches since 2007,

Bookends: Clowning around

Marcus Berkmann has written the Bookends column in this week’s issue of the Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog: Political sketchwriting, like most humorous writing, is one of those things that looks easy, especially to people who would never be able to do it in a trillion years. At any one time, though, there are only a couple of sketchwriters who are any good at all, and some of us find we move papers in order to read them. I realise now I must have been a very strange teenager to turn to Frank Johnson first every morning, and now I am an even stranger man in

Ebooks: our literary future, and past

Two big pieces of digital publishing news this week: first, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the Kindle Fire – the ‘iPad killer’. Then yesterday, the launch of Bloomsbury Reader: a new digital imprint resurrecting hundreds of out-of-print titles by HRF Keating, Storm Jameson, VS Pritchett and other writers that used to be famous. It has never been a better time to be a reader. Why then is there still an underlying suspicion of digital publishing? You can understand the wariness from some in the book trade, which was late to digital and is now terrified of getting a raw deal. What I don’t get is the facetious luddism of the

From the latest Spectator: The good war?

Here is the lead book review from the latest issue of the Spectator: Jonathan Sumption reviews Max Hasting’s history of the second world war, All Hell Let Loose. The second world war is still generally regarded as the ‘good war’. In the moral balance, the cause of the Axis powers was so unspeakably bad that their adversaries have rarely had to justify themselves. But there is, perhaps, more to it than the moral balance. The second war has gained in public esteem by being everything that the first war was not. It was fought for recognisable and, on the whole admirable, objectives. It did not begin, as the first had,

Bookbenchers: Steve Baker, MP

Welcome to the inaugural post of Bookbenchers where we ask backbench MPs what they read when they’re not white paper-pushing. Kicking things off is Steve Baker, former engineer officer in the RAF and currently MP for Wycombe – when he isn’t helping run the educational charity The Cobden Centre, or skydiving. What book’s on your bedside table at the moment?Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick What book would you read to your children?I don’t have children but I have a photo of me reading Jesus Huerta de Soto’s Money, Bank Credit and Economic Cycles to my godchildren. What literary character would you most like to be?Captain Jack Aubrey, of the Aubrey-Maturin

Eurozone crisis reader

The Eurozone crisis leads today’s news agenda (read William Hague’s take), with evermore dire predictions being made about the future of the single currency and the European Union itself. Many readers may be left uncomprehending as billions turn into trillions, and apparently we can’t count on the BBC for impartiality, so here is your Eurozone crisis reader. 1. Europe: The State of the Union by Anand Menon Confused by the Commission? Unsure of how a qualified majority vote works? Anand Menon’s book cuts through the jargon, as its publisher puts it, sketching the parameters of an indistinct political system. Menon is not an insider and this means that the book remains simple.

Youngest-ever winner of the National BBC Short Story Award

What do John Boyne, Tracy Chevalier, Joe Dunthorne, Anne Enright, Jane Harris and Kazuo Ishiguro have in common? Apart from the obvious? And apart from only coming in the first third of the alphabet? Graduates of the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing course seem to be the only people writing novels at the moment. Or novels that people will buy. The enigmatically named DW Wilson – the latest from the prestigious literary stable – and his short story finished frontrunners in the National BBC Short Story Award. The Canadian post grad beat off competiton from Jon McGregor, M J Hyland, Alison MacLeod and K J Orr to be crowned the youngest-ever winner

Across the literary pages | 26 September 2011

The most influential authors, retailers, critics, agents, publishers, broadcasters and poets were all listed in The Guardian Book 100 this weekend. First prize went to the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos who – in addition to diversifying from books to groceries – is currently setting up Blue Origin, a company which offers space travel to the general public. Author JK Rowling; Google CEO, Larry Page; Waterstone’s last chance, the Daunt/Mamut team and Chief Executive of Hachette UK, Tim Hely Hutchinson, followed close behind. Richard & Judy continue to slip down the rankings while Stieg Laarson won’t let death get in the way; his ghost checked in at number 18. Charles Dickens also manages to extend

Lloyd Evans

The triumph of humility

‘John Smith is dead.’ These four blunt syllables, as elemental and atmospheric as the first line of a classic novel, form the opening of Chris Mullin’s new collection of diaries. This is a fascinating read, crammed with gossip, jokes, insights and anecdotes, not all of them political. Mullin’s first disclosure is that the ‘decent interval’ between a leader’s death and the tussle to succeed him lasts about three seconds. The ‘Stop Blair Camp’ formed as soon as Smith was buried. They try to court Mullin and he brushes them off. ‘I’m in the Win the Next Election Camp.’ He considers backing John Prescott, but ‘I can’t bear the thought of

The odd couple | 24 September 2011

Carola Hicks was an acclaimed art historian, and, as she phrased it, a biographer of objects, exploring the ‘lives’ of art-historical subjects from the Bayeux tapestry to the stained-glass windows of King’s College Chapel, and now Jan van Eyck’s ‘Arnolfini Wedding Portrait’, deftly weaving together the history of the times in which the objects were created, art-historical analysis and a study of their afterlife, both how the pieces were treated by successive generations and what the cultural resonances of those treatments might tell us today. ‘The Arnolfini Wedding Portrait’, painted by Jan van Eyck in 1434, may or may not be a portrait of a couple named Arnolfini, and may

A tangled web

Almost two decades ago, as a junior political reporter on the Evening Standard, I heard the cabinet office minister William Waldegrave tell a parliamentary committee that in certain circumstances it was right for a prime minister to lie. The words made no impression on the committee itself, but I nevertheless dashed up to my office in the press gallery and constructed a story around his observations, which duly appeared as the late edition Evening Standard splash. The most enormous row followed. There were calls for poor Waldegrave’s resignation. The Labour opposition made out that his comment showed that no Conservative government could be trusted. This was terribly unfair. William Waldegrave,

At home in the corridors of power

To be the daughter of an enormously powerful man must always be an enthralling if sometimes daunting experience. To be close to that father when, almost single-handed, he is shaping the destinies of the nation, if not the world, is to be uniquely privileged. Mary Soames took no part in the decision-making that was happening above her head, but she was singularly well placed to sense what was going on and to understand the man who was riding the storm with such courage and aplomb. She was much younger than her siblings, her father was absorbed in his Herculean task, her mother knew that her first responsibility must be to

Recent crime fiction | 24 September 2011

In numerical terms, British police procedurals about maverick inspectors in big cities are probably at an all-time high. Few of their authors, however, have Mark Billingham’s talent for reinvigorating a flagging formula. Good As Dead (Little, Brown, £18.99) is the tenth of his London-based Tom Thorne thrillers. On her way to work, Detective Sergeant Helen Weeks, who previously appeared in Billingham’s standalone In The Dark, calls into her usual South London newsagent’s. This time she doesn’t come out with a bar of chocolate: the owner takes her and another customer hostage. Amin, his teenage son, has recently committed suicide in the young offenders institute where he was serving an eight-year

Bookends | 24 September 2011

Joan Collins first came to public notice in the 1950s, as a Rank starlet and sex kitten. In the 1970s she starred in film adaptations of her younger sister Jackie’s novels The Stud and The Bitch, and in the 1980s as Alexis Carrington in the American soap opera Dynasty. More recently she has reinvented herself, in these pages and elsewhere, as a grande dame and moral arbiter, bemoaning the debased standards and general vulgarity of our times. The World According to Joan (Constable, £12.99) finds her in full Lady Bracknell mode. ‘Chivalry is dead,’ one chapter begins, ‘manners have been thrown out of the window and politeness is an arcane

Bookends: Chivalry forsaken

David Jones has written the Bookends column in this week’s issue of the Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog: Joan Collins first came to public notice in the 1950s, as a Rank starlet and sex kitten. In the 1970s she starred in film adaptations of her younger sister Jackie’s novels The Stud and The Bitch, and in the 1980s as Alexis Carrington in the American soap opera Dynasty. More recently she has reinvented herself, in these pages and elsewhere, as a grande dame and moral arbiter, bemoaning the debased standards and general vulgarity of our times. The World According to Joan finds her in full Lady Bracknell

Briefing note: What went wrong with America? By Freidman and Mandelbaum

That Used to Be Us: What Went Wrong with America? And How it Can Come Back Who’s it by? Thomas L Friedman (Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist and author of The World is Flat) and Michael Mandelbaum (Professor of American Foreign Policy at John Hopkins University). What’s it about? How America lost its superpower status and what it can do to get it back.  Friedman and Mandelbaum distil America’s crisis into four main problem areas: Lack of focus since the end of the Cold War, and especially since 9/11. Chronic failure to address problems in education (49% of American adults do not know how long it takes the Earth to revolve

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

Nothing in Stephen Kelman’s Booker-shortlisted novel suggests to me that he is a cynical man (quite the opposite in fact), so it seems churlish to marvel at the perfect timing of this summer’s riots for him and his book. For while Sky News has barely finished rolling the breaking story that we are an island of two nations (the Rich and the Poor), here is a powerful tale of life among that less fortunate tribe.   Pigeon English is narrated by Harri, a ten-year-old who has just moved with his mum and teenage sister from Ghana to England. Harri is a bright, sunny boy from a loving family, but this

The doctored woman

At face value, Asti Hustvedt’s Medical Muses is rather a niche tome, a faultlessly researched history of three female hysterics living in eighteenth-century Paris.  However, it actually provides a broad and fascinating insight into the interwoven development of the arts and sciences during La Belle Époque – an age of rapid technological, medical and artistic advancement which, ironically enough, was to prove feminine in nothing but name.   While some women at this time were busy playing Calliope to Europe ’s artists and musicians, swathes of other down-and-outs were falling prey to the disease of the moment, Hysteria. Interred in the notorious L’Hôpital Salpêtrière in Paris – a century later