Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Sunday

Emily Rhodes

What Price World Book Night?

Last night saw the birth of something remarkable. Brainchild of legendary Canongate publisher, Jamie Byng, the inaugural World Book Night saw a million books given away across the UK. The scheme worked like this: 20,000 ‘givers’ each gave away 48 copies of a book chosen from a list of 25 titles, pre-selected by an editorial committee. The remaining books went out to places described as ‘difficult to reach, such as prisons and hospitals’. It is strange how such a seemingly altruistic and celebratory notion could be controversial. But objections have been raised and, aside from a great deal of irritation with logistical problems, many people are concerned about the act

Saturday

John Farndon

Bookends: Deeply peculiar

The kraken legend is often said to have been inspired by real sightings of giant squid, and this is why Wendy Williams in her Kraken: The Curious, Exciting and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid (Abrams, £12.99) has chosen this as a title for her book. Below the thunders of the upper deep, Far far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth . . . wrote Tennyson in his sonnet about the gigantic sea monsters of Viking myth. The kraken legend is often said to have been inspired by real sightings of giant squid, and this is why Wendy Williams in her Kraken: The Curious,

Barry Unsworth

A reluctant country

The unification of Italy 150 years ago was a terrible mistake, according to David Gilmour, imposing a national state on a diverse collection of people with little sense of patria. But Barry Unsworth thinks it’s too early to cry failure David Gilmour begins his pursuit of this most elusive of quarries where all such pursuits should begin: with a close look at the physical features of the country, which have from the remotest times determined the pattern of its history, the repeated waves of invasion and settlement. Few countries have been more vulnerable. The coastline is enormously long, impossible to guard effectively; the northern rampart of the Alps has never

Andrew Taylor

Recent crime novels

Andrew Rosenheim is building a solid reputation for intelligent, thoughtful thrillers driven by character and theme rather than plot mechanics. His latest, Fear Itself (Hutchinson, £14.99), breaks new ground for him in that it is also a historical novel. Set mainly in the United States in the late 1930s and the first year of the second world war, it deals with the activities of the Bund, an outwardly respectable German-American organisation with a pro-Nazi agenda. Jimmy Nessheim, a young Special Agent in the recently established FBI, is given the job of infiltrating it. The stakes are high — President Roosevelt is trying to obstruct Hitler’s increasingly ruthless advance in Europe,

Victoria Glendinning

Black swan

At a time when publishers seem chary of commissioning literary biographies, the conditions for writing them have never been better. Major authors born in the 1890s and early 1900s were written about pretty comprehensively in the so-called golden age of biography, stretching from the last quarter of the past century into the first few years of the present one. Now they are up for reassessment. ‘It is time to look again at Edith Sitwell,’ as Richard Greene puts it. The advantage for the new wave is that more material has become available. In the case of Edith Sitwell, biographies of her brothers Osbert and Sacheverell have filled some gaps. Letters

Matthew Dennison

Death of the Author

The death of the Polish-born British novelist Joseph Conrad is the central event of David Miller’s debut novel. The death of the Polish-born British novelist Joseph Conrad is the central event of David Miller’s debut novel. A reimagining of Conrad’s final days, Today explores the nature of bereavement. Within the novel’s confines, Conrad exists simply as a character — a dying man whose profession has been that of a writer and whose working life has necessitated the presence of a secretary, Lillian Hallowes, who, up to a point, offers the reader a commentary on the novel’s happenings. Miller attempts no assessment of Conrad’s work, his literary status or psychology. In

Peter Parker

Planting a dream

Every schoolboy knows the story of six-year-old George Washington taking his ‘little hatchet’ to his mother’s prized cherry tree. Every schoolboy knows the story of six-year-old George Washington taking his ‘little hatchet’ to his mother’s prized cherry tree. Less well known is that in later years he more than made up for this childish piece of vandalism by planting thousands of trees on his estate at Mount Vernon. Gardening became such a passion that even while defending Manhattan against the British in July 1776 Washington found time to work on planting schemes. It was a passion shared by several of America’s other founding fathers, including the three presidents who followed

Deborah Devonshire

In fine feather

The telephone rang and it was Mark Amory, literary editor of this magazine. You could have knocked me down with a feather when he asked me to review Beautiful Chickens. I said yes at once. I already had a copy of the book, given me by the staff at Heywood Hill as a Christmas present, so I knew the fun I was letting myself in for. The chickens are beautiful indeed. The Frizzle, for instance — a spoilt lady coming out of the hairdressers where they have forgotten to comb out her curls — is truly surreal. But not as surreal as what I overheard a woman telling a friend

John De-Falbe

Desk-bound traveller

With a new novel each year, Robert Edric cannot have much time for courting London’s literary establishment, but does he stay at home in East Yorkshire? The London Satyr is set in 1890s London and to me, a Londoner, it seems not merely researched but felt, as if its author has tramped the streets and occupied the world of his characters. With a new novel each year, Robert Edric cannot have much time for courting London’s literary establishment, but does he stay at home in East Yorkshire? The London Satyr is set in 1890s London and to me, a Londoner, it seems not merely researched but felt, as if its

Friday

John Farndon

Bookend: deeply peculiar

John Farndon has written the Bookend column in this week’s issue of the magazine. Here it is for readers of the book blog. Below the thunders of the upper deep, Far far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth . . . wrote Tennyson in his sonnet about the gigantic sea monsters of Viking myth. The kraken legend is often said to have been inspired by real sightings of giant squid, and this is why Wendy Williams in her Kraken: The Curious, Exciting and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid has chosen this as a title for her book. But there was no need for

David Blackburn

Book of the month: Ferguson marches on

Ring the bells for a very famous popular historian. Niall Ferguson latest book, Civilisation: the West and Rest, was published yesterday and it is this month’s Spectator book club book of the month. (The accompanying TV series begins on Sunday) Already the book is being debated. Ferguson has long had his detractors in academia – a mix of envious aristarchy and thoughtful criticism. Professional reviewers are beginning to have doubts too. Writing in the magazine a few weeks ago, Sam Leith illustrated how Ferguson had overstretched himself with Civilisation. And a reviewer in the Scotsman felt Ferguson’s neo-conservatism has prejudiced his approach to evidence. Essentially, both reviewers are suggesting that

Thursday

David Blackburn

The king’s coronation

Few things are more intriguing than an unfinished novel. With fitting symmetry, two books have been published posthumously in the past two years: Nabokov’s The Original Laura and Jose Saramango’s Cain. This year, Little Brown is to publish The Pale King, an unfinished work by David Foster Wallace – a claimant to the title of Great American Novelist, who took his own life in September 2008. Publication has been delayed twice by what one publisher described as ‘entirely foreseeable circumstances’. Obviously, sensitivity is paramount in this tragic case, but it seems that The Pale King is finally ready to be crowned. Precise publication details remain obscure, but editors on both

Wednesday

Isabel Sutton

Discovering poetry: Larkin’s ‘Here’

In a recent review of Edgelands: Journeys into England’s True Wilderness, Robert Macfarlane remarks that the English scrubland between town and countryside is a theme that seems currently to be occupying the national consciousness.  The border country that this book describes is the territory which people pass through on their way to other places; the no man’s land traversed by motorways and criss-crossed by telephone wires.  Macfarlane is completely right: not only have two poets, Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts, written a book about the edgelands, but the BFI is organising a short film festival on the subject of ‘liminal Britain’ later in the year. The idea of edgelands

Tuesday

Austen Saunders

Prejudiced accounts<br />

Roger Scruton is a man who has found himself condemned for defending the right things in the wrong way. Love, home, happiness and justice are the overriding concerns of his work, but his arguments about how we can achieve them have been repeatedly damned as mad and dangerous by those kind enough to appoint themselves the moral policeman of public thought. Mark Dooley, it is fair to say, is not one of those moral policeman. He is instead a Scrutonian acolyte whose aim in this book, The Philosopher on Dover Beach, is to outline and celebrate what he takes to be Scruton’s “philosophy of love”. Dooley does not try to

Monday

John Stubbs

The greatest of gallants

John Aubrey was at his most vivacious when describing the cavaliers of his era. ‘A gallant in an age of the lewdest bawdy,’ he wrote of Lucius Carey with ill-disguised pleasure. These men were rogues like Rochester, Lovelace and Herrick – broke, drunk and invariably syphilitic. They were also royalists, a licentious contrast to their puritanical political opponents. The ’roundheads’ regarded the cavalier’s person and politics with equal loathing, convinced that both would lead to eternal damnation. Milton’s famous evocation of pandemonium in Paradise Lost has a censorious tone that was perhaps a reaction to the abandon of Restoration England. Renowned historian John Stubbs has returned to Aubrey’s fascination by

David Blackburn

Across the literary pages | 28 February 2011

Nancy Drew, the timeless teenage girl’s classic, has gone digital. Will the Famous Five be joining her in the 21st Century? Time’s Techland column reports: ‘The Nancy Drew series might have been around for 80 years, but that doesn’t mean that the art of the mystery novel is outdated. Her Interactive has updated the fan favorite female detective’s adventures with the Nancy Drew Mobile Mysteries app. Using text inspired by the original books, the app creates an interactive story for readers. You don’t have to imagine you’re on the case with Nancy Drew, now you can be part of it as well.’ At the moment of The King’s Speech’s Oscars

Sunday

Jerry Hayes

Transcending the Bounds of Awfulness

Jerry Hayes, the former Conservative MP for Harlow and criminal Barrister, returns to The Spectator Arts Blog with his take on Janet Street Porter’s book Don’t Let The B*****ds Get You Down, which has recently been reprinted in paperback. You really won’t want to put this book down. Because the moment the first page of this execrable excuse for a self-help manual is finished, you will feel compelled to hurl it from the nearest window and pray that it won’t land on consecrated ground. This is not just any old turkey. It is a Janet Street Porter primal scream of a self-boasting, oven-ready, 25-pounder. It is a book that quite

Saturday

Mark Mason

Bookends: Life underground

For the first 17 days of their ordeal, the Chilean miners trapped underground last year were forced to ration themselves to one sliver of tuna every 36 hours. Less than a month later, while still down the mine but after rescuers had secured them regular food supplies, they threatened to go on hunger strike. Such surprises are vital in a book like Jonathan Franklin’s The 33 (Bantam Press, £14.99). When you already know the story’s conclusion, details are everything. The most gripping period is that between contact being made with the miners and their eventual ascent. Psychology rather than physics takes centre stage (it was strained relations with the psychologist

Sam Leith Sam Leith

A negative outlook

Why, the energetic historian Niall Ferguson asks in his new book, did a minority of people stuck out on the extreme western end of the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the world in cultural, political and economic terms for more than half a millennium? This, he says, ‘seems to me the most interesting question a historian of the modern era can ask’. Its supplementary — to which he only tentatively suggests answers — is ‘is it all over?’ Make no mistake [he writes], this is not another self-satisfied version of ‘the triumph of the West’. I want to show that it was not just Western superiority that led to the

Ed Howker

Getting the balance right

Branko Milanovic is the lead economist at the World Bank’s research department, a professor at the University of Maryland and a grand fromage at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace too. Branko Milanovic is the lead economist at the World Bank’s research department, a professor at the University of Maryland and a grand fromage at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace too. He is not, it turns out, a very light-hearted man and that’s a particular misfortune because The Haves and the Have-Nots was clearly designed to be the easy-reading version of his far more weighty tome on global inequality, Worlds Apart. The structure of this latest work is idiosyncratic