Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Saturday

Bevis Hillier

The Midas touch

Now that we can read on Kindle and some people fear that paper-and-ink books will become extinct, one’s first impulse might be to say hurrah for this mighty production. Now that we can read on Kindle and some people fear that paper-and-ink books will become extinct, one’s first impulse might be to say hurrah for this mighty production. But then doubts creep in: isn’t it a bit OTT? It is by far the largest book I have ever reviewed, or indeed handled. A monster of a book, a juggernaut, a Leviathan. And it has a whopping price to match: 400 smackers. I had the sneaking thought: do the publishers, Reel

Kate Chisholm

Beastly behaviour

If the production team of The Archers ever needs a scriptwriter at short notice, they need look no further than Miranda France. For her latest book, she’s gone back to her roots as the daughter of a farming family and created a novel that’s a cross between an omnibus edition of the radio soap and the gimlet-eyed prose of Stella Gibbons. Hill Farm is set in a nameless village somewhere on the borders of Sussex and Kent. Hayes loves the land, but not farming. His wife Isabel loves the idea of the country but not the reality of the falling-down farm to which she is shackled by duty rather than

Nicky Haslam

Fish and chaps

This is the ultimate ‘niche’ book. This is the ultimate ‘niche’ book. It focuses on that singular decade between the years of rockers and punks, when toffs, freed from school or army uniforms, and toughs, discarding skinhead aggression, found a sartorial meeting point. This new style, the cool child of late Fifties mods, had been given a huge public oomph by the Beatles and ‘their silly little suits’ as David Bailey (who has stated that he, along with myself, was the unwitting originator of the look) succinctly puts it. It was sharper, leaner and hinted at androgeny. Its creators were no longer found in caverns down Carnaby Street, nor high

John Gimlette

The world according to ants

The South American rain forest is the perfect environment for a dank, uncomfortable thriller. It’s brutally competitive; life is thrillingly vulnerable; you can’t safely touch or taste anything, and, beyond a few yards, you can see nothing at all. Even Amerindians are anxious in this environment, and credit it with all manner of horrors. In my own experience, it is, in every sense, a spine-tingling environment. So novelist Edward Docx has chosen well in the setting for his dark tale. It’s not a complex plot but there’s the constant feeling that you’re not seeing the whole picture, and that nothing is quite as it seems. Docx is a master of

Douglas Hurd

Go out and govern New South Wales

‘In the mists and damp of the Scottish Highlands, 61-year-old Sir Bartle Frere was writing a letter. ‘In the mists and damp of the Scottish Highlands, 61-year-old Sir Bartle Frere was writing a letter. Straight-backed, grey-haired, he had the bright eye and bristled moustache of an ageing fox-terrier.’ Reading this, at the beginning of a chapter, we cannot be sure whether what follows will be Lytton Strachey or John Buchan. The tale might go either way. The letter might be either an invitation to shoot grouse or in answer to a summons to cope with a crisis threatening the British empire. The second guess would be right. The letter was

Thursday

David Blackburn

A dark, seething read

Usually, I mistrust hype. But if you get the chance over this Bank Holiday Weekend and the next, grab a copy of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad, which has just won the Pullitzer and would doubtless sweep the Grammies if it was eligible. I have just started it and it was immediately beguiling. It’s a book of contradictions: self-regarding then mysterious; constrained and then epic; foul and at a turn inspiring. I can’t wait to get out into the sun and read it at leisure. It’s much too early to fathom my own response to the book. So here is Cathleen Schine, a devotee of Egan, writing

David Blackburn

Full to the brim

Today, the Spectator has published an Easter Weekend and Royal Wedding double issue. It’s full of goodies from the finest writers. Subscribers can read it here or you can open a subscription from £1 an issue; or you can buy it off the shelf of any discerning newsagent for £3.95. Meanwhile, here is a brief selection from the Books section. A.N. Wilson reviews Ian Ker’s biography of G.K. Chesterton, the ‘man mountain of Fleet Street’: ‘Ker’s book is immensely long, and it is full of details which Chestertonians will savour. Everyone knew that GK was fat, but I had never realised quite how fat he was until I read this

Wednesday

Matthew Richardson

Home is where the heart is | 20 April 2011

The homes of famous writers have a strange allure. A suggestion of genius in the air, perhaps. In the Telegraph, Claudia FitzHerbert has a beguiling piece on newly-reopened Max Gate (pictured), the house in which Thomas Hardy wrote many of his most celebrated works.   Having the name of a famous writer in the town hall records is a boon for any local authority. Take a bow Stratford-upon-Avon. The recently refurbished RSC theatre is just the start. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust looks after a variety of Bard-related real estate including the Henley Street house in which Shakespeare was born, Anne Hathaway’s cottage and the farm once occupied by Shakespeare’s mother.

David Blackburn

Beryl the bride

At last, Beryl Bainbridge has won the Booker Prize. What a pity it is won posthumously, because she deserved recognition in her lifetime. The Booker Prize, either out of sentimentality, self-promotion or a combination of the two, urged readers to pick the Best of Beryl to mark an influential author who had been overlooked by 5 different Booker judging panels, which led her to be known as the ‘eternal bridesmaid’ of the prize. Master Georgie, her novel about the Crimean War, won the public vote. It’s all terribly nice. The Booker’s literary director, Ion Trewin, gushed: “I have a feeling that, wherever she is now, she’ll be hugging herself and

Tuesday

Michael Amherst

More than just a pretty boy

There seems to be something of a fashion at the moment in panning James Franco’s literary debut, Palo Alto. If you are looking for motives they are not hard to find: Franco is nauseatingly prolific – not only did he host this year’s Oscar ceremony but he was also nominated for his performance in 127 Hours; he recently took four Masters programmes and is now doing a PhD at Yale; he’s a keen artist and has presented his work at the Clocktower Gallery in New York. Oh, and he’s all right to look at too. Gucci agree, having made him the face of their men’s fragrance. So no, there’s no

Monday

David Blackburn

Across the literary pages | 18 April 2011

The Desert News, Utah, reports on the discovery of a 600 year old travel book, The Nuremburg Chronicle: ‘Rare-book dealer Ken Sanders has seen more than his share of old books. But he’s never seen one in Utah quite like ancient tome that made his jaw drop last weekend. “It’s a real thrill and a treat to hold something in your hand that was new when Columbus discovered America and the New World,” he said of the dilapidated book that is more than 500 years old, making it one of the oldest books ever printed with movable type.’ David Baddiel considers (£) David Foster Wallace and The Pale King in

Saturday

Lewis Jones

Bookends: A felicitous trouper

When, during rehearsals for a production of Lorca, Celia Imrie expressed an opinion about a bit of business, a fellow player said to her: ‘And what would you know about playing Lorca? You are nothing but a mere TV comedienne.’ She slapped the impertinent thespian’s face, and quite right too. Though proud to bill herself as ‘Light Ent’, Celia Imrie is more accurately a great comic actor, not only in Acorn Antiques and Coronation Street, but also in The School for Scandal and The Way of the World. When, during rehearsals for a production of Lorca, Celia Imrie expressed an opinion about a bit of business, a fellow player said

Sam Leith Sam Leith

An existential hero

Sam Leith is enthralled by a masterpiece on monotony, but is devastated by its author’s death When David Foster Wallace took his own life two and a half years ago, we lost someone for whom I don’t think the word genius was an empty superlative. He was an overpowering stylist, and a dazzling comedian of ideas. He could be gasp-makingly funny, but had an agonising moral seriousness. There’s more on one page of Wallace than on ten of most of his contemporaries. His mind seemed to have more buzzing in it than the rest of us could imagine being able to cope with, and perhaps than he could. The Pale

Jonathan Mirsky

Pet obsession

I declare two interests. I own a dog, Lily, and I admire the New York Review of Books. What could go wrong? Especially because, according to the enthusiastic introduction, back in 1999, by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, My Dog Tulip won golden opinions from its first publication in 1956, notably from Julian Huxley and E. M. Forster. (I must say I saw Forster almost daily in 1954—1955 during his short walks at Kings College, Cambridge and he didn’t have a dog.) As Thomas wrote, here is the memoir of an unremarkable, badly behaved dog that adored her master, who loved her in return. A ‘man of letters’, as they used to

Charlotte Moore

In Di’s guise

What if Princess Diana hadn’t died, but, aided by her besotted press secretary, had faked her death and fled to America to live under an assumed identity? Is this an interesting question? Is a novelist justified in exploring such a supposition? I believe the answer to both questions is ‘no’. What if Princess Diana hadn’t died, but, aided by her besotted press secretary, had faked her death and fled to America to live under an assumed identity? Is this an interesting question? Is a novelist justified in exploring such a supposition? I believe the answer to both questions is ‘no’. In writing Untold Story, Monica Ali has made a serious

Nicola Shulman

King of spin

Draw two two-inch triangles, tip to tip, one on top of the other. A little way down the left flank of the upper triangle, take a perpendicular line out to an inch, then turn your pencil at a right angle and continue another inch. Repeat on the other side. Next, draw two short, splayed lines down from the base of the lower triangle. Finally, put an acute accent, an inch long, about two inches above the whole. What have you got? According to Dr David Starkey, who performs this trick at schools all over the country, Henry VIII in 13 lines. Apparently he is recognisable in this form as far

Quentin Letts

Slippery Jack

A mad, muscular Sally Bercow cavorts on the Commons chair, diminutive husband on her knee, his features impish. With a few scratches of the nib, the Independent’s merciless Dan Brown, in his cover design for this biography, passes judgment more viciously than Bobby Friedman manages over the next 250 often unexciting pages. The book is not entirely without merit. It is earnest in the manner of a schoolgirl’s essay. There are not too many spelling mistakes. The author has plainly made scores of telephone calls to old acquaintances of the man we must now, revoltingly, call Mr Speaker. Friedman deserves a B-plus for effort. His book is not, however, as

Philip Ziegler

A fate worse than death

Hugo Vickers has already produced a well-documented and balanced biography of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. To follow this with the Duchess of Windsor is as bold a left-and-right as one could ask for; like writing biographies of Shylock and Antonio or Cain and Abel. ‘I will go to my grave,’ wrote the lady-in-waiting Frances Campbell-Preston, ‘trying to convince people that the Queen Mother did not hate the Duchess of Windsor.’ ‘Hate’ is a strong word; but the Duchess certainly hated the Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth was as much as anyone responsible for the fact that the Duchess was never fully accepted by the royal family. The subtitle to

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Burning the Koran Again

Dan Hodges disagrees with me (and with Dan Hannan) and argues that, yes, we should definitely imprison people for burning books. Certainly if that book is the Koran. And perhaps other books too. Who knows where it will all end once you start? Those who defend Quran-burning on the basis of free speech miss the point. […] This is an overt, conscious action, motivated by malign intent. It is not the product of open, free-spirited discourse, but an aggressive, premeditated provocation. Nor is it actually speech. It’s not opening a dialogue or building an argument. Quite the opposite. It’s a deliberate act of destruction; the destruction of a dialogue and

Lewis Jones

Bookends: A felicitous trooper

Lewis Jones has written the Bookend column in this week’s issue of the Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog: When, during rehearsals for a production of Lorca, Celia Imrie expressed an opinion about a bit of business, a fellow player said to her: ‘And what would you know about playing Lorca? You are nothing but a mere TV comedienne.’ She slapped the impertinent thespian’s face, and quite right too. Though proud to bill herself as ‘Light Ent’, Celia Imrie is more accurately a great comic actor, not only in Acorn Antiques and Coronation Street, but also in The School for Scandal and The Way of the World.