Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Saturday

Philip Mansel

Under Eastern eyes

The Ottoman Empire inspired great travel books as well as great architects. Travellers like George Sandys, Richard Pococke or the Chevalier d’Arvieux in the 17th and 18th centuries were curious, erudite and less arrogant than their 19th-century successors. The Ottoman Empire inspired great travel books as well as great architects. Travellers like George Sandys, Richard Pococke or the Chevalier d’Arvieux in the 17th and 18th centuries were curious, erudite and less arrogant than their 19th-century successors. Like cameras, they recorded monuments, encounters, manners and customs. They can make the reader feel that he or she is there, in Smyrna or Beirut, at that time. Ottoman travel writers on Europe, however,

Lee Langley

Living dolls

Born in Japan, growing up in America in the Sixties, Yoko Kawaguchi was perplexed by the persistence of what she felt to be an anachronistic image of Japanese culture: the geisha. ‘That mincing, simpering personification of female subservience to the male infuriated me,’ she writes in the introduction to Butterfly’s Sisters. Her book explores the Western portrayal of Japanese women with emphasis on the geisha, from the mid-19th century to the present day, comparing perception with reality, misunderstandings compounded by prejudice. She details the geisha’s appearance from head to toe (tortoiseshell hairpin to wooden-soled geta), and the life, from the market in virginity to retirement and/or violent death, encompassing history,

Charlotte Hobson

The sweet smell of danger

If this novel is ever published with a scratch-and-sniff cover — which incidentally, I think it might be successful enough to warrant — this is what it would smell of: cheap petrol, lust, the ripe, acidic scent of decaying corpse, cat litter, $2,000 suits, Cristal champagne, decaying encyclopaedia, corruption, fumes from the power plant, betrayal, sausage. If this novel is ever published with a scratch-and-sniff cover — which incidentally, I think it might be successful enough to warrant — this is what it would smell of: cheap petrol, lust, the ripe, acidic scent of decaying corpse, cat litter, $2,000 suits, Cristal champagne, decaying encyclopaedia, corruption, fumes from the power plant,

Cressida Connolly

Pig in the middle

Writing an autobiographical account of middle age is a brave undertaking, necessitating a great deal of self-scrutiny at a time of life when most of us would sooner look the other way and hope for the best. Jane Shilling took up riding relatively late (she even joined a hunt, as described in her book The Fox in the Cupboard), so she has physical daring. The Stranger in the Mirror shows that she also has emotional and intellectual courage. Unsurprisingly, the news is not good. God and gardening are the traditional refuges of the menopausal, but neither seems to hold much interest for Shilling. Romantic entanglements seem unlikely and her teenaged

Ian Birrell

Hell or high water

As his battered bomber hurtled towards the Pacific in May 1943, Louis Zamperini thought to himself that no one was going to survive the crash. If he had had the slightest inkling of what lay ahead of him, he readily admits that he might have preferred death, staying beneath the surface of the water rather than wrestling his way from the wreckage as it sank. Clambering into a life raft floating amid the blood and wreckage, he knew the odds were bad. Search planes were more likely to crash — just as his barely airworthy B-24 had — than rescue downed airmen. Only three of the crew survived — and

Mark Mason

Bookends: OK, by Allan Metcalf

One of Allan Metcalf’s contentions in OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word is that the two letters have become America’s philosophy: ‘we don’t insist that everything be perfect; OK is good enough’. One of Allan Metcalf’s contentions in OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word is that the two letters have become America’s philosophy: ‘we don’t insist that everything be perfect; OK is good enough’. It’s a pity that his book proves the point. There are occasional snippets of interest. Modern texters shorten the word to ‘k’ (how lazy can a thumb get?), while NASA were the first to lengthen it with an initial ‘A’, seeking clarity

Friday

Mark Mason

Bookends: OK

Mark Mason has written the Bookends column in this week’s issue of the Spectator. Here it is as an exclusive for this blog. One of Allan Metcalf’s contentions in OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word is that the two letters have become America’s philosophy: ‘we don’t insist that everything be perfect; OK is good enough’. It’s a pity that his book proves the point. There are occasional snippets of interest. Modern texters shorten the word to ‘k’ (how lazy can a thumb get?), while NASA were the first to lengthen it with an initial ‘A’, seeking clarity amid radio static. Baseball pitchers sometimes employ an ‘OK’ grip, the

David Blackburn

What the Dickens?

It was the literary equivalent of Gordon Brown’s Arctic Monkeys moment.  Disgraced American politician Michael Steele was asked to name his favourite book. ‘War and Peace,’ he said, aghast that anyone could have imagined anything else. He then illustrated his mastery of Tolstoy with the following quotation: ‘It was the best of times and the worst of times.’ This must be the age of foolishness rather than wisdom. To have misattributed a famous quotation is one thing, to have bastardised it another. Anyway, this slip reminded me of Robert Gottlieb’s wonderful and extensive examination of Dickens, published by the New York Review of Books last July. Drawing on recent biographies

Thursday

Austen Saunders

Discovering poetry: London, capital of the world

With new taxes and regulations being placed on London’s financial sector, come predictions of London’s demise as a global financial centre. But an important part of London’s mythology is of a city which is repeatedly destroyed, yet always rises again. The great fire of 1666 is one of the most famous of these episodes of cyclical apocalypse. In Annus Mirabilis, written shortly after the fire, John Dryden imagines a rebuilt London rising stronger and more beautiful before. Dryden is apologetic about old London, which was “but rude and low”. Another constant feature of London’s mythology is that it’s ugly, despite its fantastic wealth. But this is through choice. England’s political

David Blackburn

Coming in 2011: David Lodge on H.G. Wells

Literary biography is dead, long since in fact. Biographical works of literary figures are becoming a vogue. Arthur and George and the recent Tolstoy film biopic will be joined by David Lodge’s A Man of Parts. This is the life of H.G. Wells, as remembered by H.G. Wells, according to Lodge that is. No small task, not least because of the many potential pitfalls facing the writer as he tries to control voice and narration. Where does Lodge end and Wells begin? And vice versa.   Wells is a particularly daunting subject, riven with contradictions. A feminist womaniser, a Darwinist with intense religious convictions, a stylist who abandoned the literary

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

A digression

This post is not about one of the crucial issues of the day, so if you’re hungry for controversy, please move on. This is a trivial personal thing and I wondered if you might help. A couple of months ago I started to read a new novel by one of our esteemed highbrow-ish writers. I cannot remember the name of the writer or the novel, and I don’t wish to be reminded either. The story was written in the first person and the thing was I got half way down the first page and flung the book away from me in intense irritation, an irritation which stayed with me for

Wednesday

Matthew Richardson

The name’s Holmes, Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes and James Bond are to be resurrected. Anthony Horowitz, children’s novelist and TV writer (Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders), is writing the Holmes novel, while Jeffrey Deaver is following up Sebastian Faulk’s Bond effort, Devil May Care, with a new 007 thriller – Carte Blanche. A new Holmes volume is intriguing. The cerebral sleuth is out of step with the gruesomeness of modern, hard-boiled detective narratives. Forget Robert Downey, Jr. or Benedict Cumberbatch: Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories are winsome tales, meandering along in a haze of psychology, subterfuge and pipe smoke. The razor-wielding grizzle of Silent Witness, Law and Order or CSI is chalk to its cheese. And,

David Blackburn

Pressing for the prize

The judges of the T S. Eliot poetry prize are in session. The prize is the most prestigious and the most lucrative poetry prize in Britain and this year the competition is comprised of luminaries. In fact, ‘luminaries’ doesn’t do justice to this field of Nobel laureates, contenders for the poet laureateship and other acclaimed originals. The winner will be announced on Sunday. As light relief from the weighty matters of the times, the Today programme has asked each nominee to read their allotted poems. Here you can find Simon Armitage The English Astronaut and Knowing What We Know Now; Pascale Petit reading The Little Deer and What Water Gave

Tuesday

Austen Saunders

Friends in the North

If I were a contemporary novelist, each day I would pray in thanks for unhappy families. Where would new writing be without them? Bunderlin is another of those novels in which families’ secrets are slowly uncovered by those whose lives have been unwittingly shaped by their consequences. The Bunderlin of Bunderlin, is a rather eccentric type who forces his way into the life of the novel’s protagonist, Martin. Bunderlin is a man whom, if I were given to cliché, I would describe as a ‘gentle giant’. Fond of animals, given to wordplay (of a musical if seemingly meaningless nature), Martin first meets him as a schoolboy. When Bunderlin reappears several

Monday

David Blackburn

Across the literary pages | 17 January 2011

Here is a selection of pieces from the weekend’s literary pages. The Guardian profiles Neal Cassady, the inspiration for Dean Moriarty in Kerouac’s On the Road. ‘Carolyn Cassady opens the door to her pretty green cottage with a lipsticked grin and a shy handshake. She’s 87, but looks a decade younger, dressed neatly in a lavender fleece with matching moccasins. The second wife of Beat muse Neal Cassady – the man immortalised as Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s 1957 classic On the Road – Carolyn moved to London in 1983, and relocated here 10 years later. “I was brought up English,” she says. “My parents were anglophiles and we had

Saturday

Mark Amory

Bookends: Musical bumps

In the Christmas issue of The Spectator there was a review of Showtime: A History of Broadway Musicals, a book which ran to 785 pages. Ruth Leon, in The Sound of Musicals (Oberon Books, £9.99), deals with the whole lot, well perhaps 20 in practice, in 128 much smaller ones; so she has to be selective. The top three, in her view, select themselves: Guys and Dolls (1950), My Fair Lady (1954) and West Side Story (1957) — ‘almost everyone agrees on this’. In the Christmas issue of The Spectator there was a review of Showtime: A History of Broadway Musicals, a book which ran to 785 pages. Ruth Leon,

Allan Massie

Life & Letters: Memoirs as literature

Laurence Sterne remarked rather a long time ago that they order these matters better in France, and happily this is still the case. Fifteen hundred teachers of literature recently protested about the choice of a set book for Terminale L du bac — the exam taken by 17-year-olds. Their concern is perhaps more political than literary. Nevertheless they denounced the choice of book as ‘a negation of our discipline’. ‘We are teachers of literature,’ they said; ‘is it our business to discuss a work of history?’ Laurence Sterne remarked rather a long time ago that they order these matters better in France, and happily this is still the case. Fifteen

Philip Hensher

A novel approach

An interesting phenomenon of recent years is the novel about a real-life novelist. Of course, writers have often included fictitious members of their trade within their work — one thinks immediately of Thackeray’s Pendennis, Anthony Powell’s Nick Jenkins and Waugh’s Pinfold. Often, too, novelists have contrived extended tributes to favoured masters — Fielding features prominently in Kingsley Amis’s I Like It Here — without intruding into their social world. But, until recently, the novel which openly entered into biographical territory, writing a romance about the private lives of classical novelists or other artists, was rarely taken very seriously. Carl Bechhofer Roberts’s This Side Idolatry on the life of Dickens is

Oliver Gilmour

An aura of sanctity

According to Arturo Toscanini, ‘any asino can conduct, but to make music is difficile’. According to Arturo Toscanini, ‘any asino can conduct, but to make music is difficile’. The technical side of conducting did not appeal to Carlo Maria Giulini, the subject of Thomas Saler’s highly illuminating biography. He was an immensely spiritual man, ‘an old-fashioned poet in a world of ego- maniacs and prosaic technicians’ in the words of Martin Bernheimer. In many ways the two maestri were polar opposites, Giulini (who died in 2005) being a gentle aristocratic in demeanour, while Toscanini behaved like an irascible bulldog. Giulini’s spirituality was certainly not wishy-washy and Saler indicates that the

Alexander Masters

Smart ass

It’s the way Caroline pisses onto the concrete during the lunch break that delights her work colleagues: in a steaming, splattery arc. It’s the way Caroline pisses onto the concrete during the lunch break that delights her work colleagues: in a steaming, splattery arc. ‘It seemed to them an eloquent demonstration of the fact that the rules they lived by did not apply to her.’ Caroline is a donkey. During the day she analyses policy documents, calculates premiums and nibbles the pot-plants. In the evening she trots home across the city, through the chaotic tides of traffic and confusion of construction sites, to her keeper, Mr Shaw, to play chess.