Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Saturday

Ian Birrell

Caught in the crossfire

Maqbool Sheikh dreaded hearing a knock at the door of his home. For he was the most intimate witness to one of the world’s most enduring and forgotten conflicts, the struggle over Kashmir. As the only autopsy expert at the police hospital in Srinagar, it was his job to conduct post mortems on those shot, stabbed or blown to pieces — and the bodies arrived at the rate of around 1,000 a year. Each time, as he drove back to the mortuary, he wondered whether he would be confronted with the corpse of a child, a woman or another young man. The law required him to determine how each one

Marcus Berkmann

The perfect book

Like Nelson Eddy, Devon Malcolm and the composer Havergal Brian, the critic Greil Marcus has one of those names that is all the more memorable for being obviously the wrong way round. He is, of course, the doyen, high priest and panjandrum of American music writers, whose best-known book, Mystery Train (1975), dared to treat American rock with a seriousness and a dignity it had previously been denied. In the years since, Marcus has taught rock, and indeed roll, at several prestigious US universities, and settled into the role of revered cultural historian. Staring out of the flyleaf of this latest volume, he looks slightly concerned but distracted in a

Andro Linklater

Tried and tested

In June 1964, when Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment for acts of sabotage against the apartheid government of South Africa, he was, as photographs reveal, a burly, blackhaired man, with a handsome, pugnacious grin. By the time he was released in 1990, his hair was grey and his features gaunt. But his first speech as a free man described the same ideal of a democratic, multiracial South Africa that he had presented in his final address before being sentenced — ‘an ideal I hope to live for, but if needs be, an ideal for which I am prepared to die’. That imprisonment should neither have broken nor embittered

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Crisp and brave

Among my guests last weekend as I read Lord Mandelson’s book was Ben, aged two and a half. Among my guests last weekend as I read Lord Mandelson’s book was Ben, aged two and a half. Ben’s language skills are precocious, but he is passing through a stage, as some infants do, of preferring to speak in the third rather than the first person. Thus ‘Ben wants an ice cream’; or ‘Ben was a bit disappointed’. Once, even, he declared: ‘Ben’s quite tired’ (thoughtful pause), ‘he said.’ If the unexamined life is indeed not worth living, this child has taken the lesson to heart. Peter Mandelson, who has called his

Gilbert Adair

No body in the library

The opening paragraph of Duchess of Death’s fourth chapter, in which its subject is about to have her first whodunit published, begins thus: The opening paragraph of Duchess of Death’s fourth chapter, in which its subject is about to have her first whodunit published, begins thus: September 25, 1919. John Lane was very pleased with himself as he leaned into the mirror over the sink in his bathroom and examined his beard. Using a small pair of manicure scissors, which he was barely able to handle with his too-chubby fingers, he snipped at a few stray hairs. And, four lines later in the same faux- finicky vein, the paragraph ends:

Saturday

Jonathan Mirsky

The body in the snow

A word is missing from the subtitle of Jonathan Green’s shocking exposé: cowardice. A word is missing from the subtitle of Jonathan Green’s shocking exposé: cowardice. It shines out of his story of the murder of the 17-year-old Tibetan nun, Kelsang Namtso. It happened on 30 September 2006, at the base camp on Cho Oyu in Tibet, the sixth highest peak in the world. Forty teams of Westerners, who had paid up to $20,000 each for the trip, waited there for their turns to climb. To make the wait more comfortable, hundreds of yaks and porters had carried quantities of wine, sushi, TV films, pregnancy-testing kits, condoms and M&Ms to

Harriet Sergeant

Reverting to type

While I was living in Tokyo, a Japanese girl friend of mine fell in love with a British investment banker. After promising marriage, he abandoned her for an English wife from the counties. But my girl friend was no Madame Butterfly. She did not attempt suicide. She felt she had had a lucky escape. A visit to Wiltshire to meet his family had convinced her the English upper classes were mad. Emerging from her room on Sunday evening, she discovered her lover’s father polishing the family shoes. She rang me in shock. Did he suffer from some kind of foot fetish? she asked. I explained that men of that generation

Geoffrey Blainey

Identity politics

In the past half century, much ingenuity and humdrum effort has gone into redefining Australia as a nation. Politicians, intellectuals and advertisers have joined in the game of searching or ‘yearning for an identity’. The phrase ‘national identity’, now a bit boring, arrived only in the 1950s. In their thoughtful book, James Curran and Stuart Ward argue that this game was inspired by the global decline of Britain, the withdrawing of British forces from Asia, the coupling of Westminster with the European Union and the feeling that Australians were becoming ‘abandoned Britons’. It should be added that Australia was also abandoning Britain. The dramatic swing in Australian trade from Britain

Anne Applebaum

Proscribed reading

In 1948, Poland’s new communist government was badly in need of legitimacy and desperate for international recognition. So they did what any self-respecting left-wing government would do, back in those days, in order to win a bit of respect; they held a cultural Congress. In 1948, Poland’s new communist government was badly in need of legitimacy and desperate for international recognition. So they did what any self-respecting left-wing government would do, back in those days, in order to win a bit of respect; they held a cultural Congress. They invited Picasso, A. J. P. Taylor, Aldous Huxley, a host of prominent Soviet literary bureaucrats and whichever left-leaning writers they could

Ian Dunlop

The perfect stranger

There are an estimated 417,000 people in the UK suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and double that number suffering from other forms of dementia. There are an estimated 417,000 people in the UK suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and double that number suffering from other forms of dementia. Potentially there are a large number of readers for John Suchet’s touchingly honest account of his wife’s slide into dementia, but — and here is the irony — it will not be the victims themselves of these diseases who will perhaps find comfort or insight from his book but the million or more carers who look after them. John Suchet is a famous television

Andrew Taylor

Recent crime novels | 17 July 2010

Michael Ridpath, best known for his excellent financial thrillers, explores new territory in Where the Shadows Lie, which combines elements of the American cop crime novel with J. R. R. Tolkein and post-credit-crunch Iceland. Magnus, a detective with the Boston Police Department, is a key prosecution witness in a case that may bring down a Dominican drug gang. For his own safety, he’s temporarily transferred to Iceland to advise their police department on modern criminal methods. He’s promptly provided with work experience — the killing of a philandering academic. Why did a suspicious Yorkshire truck driver with a fetish for Tolkein have an appointment with the dead man? How does

Mark Mason

Teed off

There are those of us who, asked if we play golf, reply: ‘No, I like women.’ A relaxing game in pleasant surroundings it may be. There are those of us who, asked if we play golf, reply: ‘No, I like women.’ A relaxing game in pleasant surroundings it may be. But that disappears under a landslide of regulations about shirt collars and footwear, penned by men who boast of ‘values’ yet are happy only when everyone in sight is Exactly Like Them, and not just in terms of gender. Maurice Flitcroft loved the game with a passion. Regulations less so. A crane driver at Vickers shipyard in Barrow, Flitcroft reached

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Great Political Feuds: Hawke vs Keating

As Danny Finkelstein tweets, never mind Blair vs Brown vs Mandelson, the feud between Bob Hawke and Paul Keating is just as entertaining. The latest outbreak of fighting has been caused by a new biography of Hawke, written by his wife. Keating does not approve of its depiction of their time in government. As this letter to Hawke demonstrates: Dear Bob, It was with much disappointment that I opened The Weekend Australian to find on page three the headline “Hawke’s take on ditherer Keating and lying Richo” and to read at the first line that either you or Blanche had described me as “an ailing vacillator”. As you know, I

Saturday

Florence Odonoghue

A cousin across the water

Though he was to live at Castle Leslie in Co. Monaghan, Sir John Randalph (later Shane) Leslie, cousin of Winston Churchill, was born at Stratford House, London, in 1885 though baptised at Glaslough with Lord Randolph Churchill as godfather. Though he was to live at Castle Leslie in Co. Monaghan, Sir John Randalph (later Shane) Leslie, cousin of Winston Churchill, was born at Stratford House, London, in 1885 though baptised at Glaslough with Lord Randolph Churchill as godfather. After Eton and King’s, Cambridge, Shane, at Churchill’s bidding, stood as a Home Ruler for Londonderry City in both the 1910 general elections. He lost each time by about 100 votes to

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Questionable Claim of the Day

From Jonathan Jones in the Guardian: Surely if the novel in English has a master now at the peak of his powers, it is Ian McEwan. It doesn’t and he isn’t. This follows an equally dubious claim: Any honest fan of modern fiction has to acknowledge the supremacy of American writers since the 1960s. For this particular British reader, to discover the novels of Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon, in particular, was to be released from the tongue-tied mumblings of postwar English fiction into a new world of generous imaginative reach and exuberant language. Oh really? In the first place the notion that there’s some kind of unofficial competition between

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Learning to live with the bomb

The call consisted of three short blows of breath. A minute later, the phone rang again. Once more: three short blows of breath. Mr Cowell, under diplomatic cover, was the MI6 handler for Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, the West’s single most important asset in the Kremlin — and the calls he took were the prearranged code that Penkovsky was to use to tell him that a Soviet nuclear attack on the West was imminent. I’d have shat a brick. Wouldn’t you? But Cowell kept his cool. He didn’t call London and get the counterstrike underway. He didn’t put his head between his knees and wait for oblivion. The sky could have

John R. MacArthur

King and his killer

In the late days of the Bush administration, it was fashionable among liberals to call George W. Bush the ‘worst’ president since the founding of the republic and to suggest that under his leadership America experienced its own version of the Dark Ages. In the late days of the Bush administration, it was fashionable among liberals to call George W. Bush the ‘worst’ president since the founding of the republic and to suggest that under his leadership America experienced its own version of the Dark Ages. Even allowing for Bush’s considerable ignorance and malevolent world view, those contemporary doomsayers had forgotten recent history. As bad as the Bush era was,

D J-Taylor

Physical and spiritual decay

The most striking thing about Piers Paul Read’s early novels was their characters’ susceptibility to physical decay. The most striking thing about Piers Paul Read’s early novels was their characters’ susceptibility to physical decay. The bloom of youth barely had time to settle before it was overrun by maggots. Thus, coolly appraising his mistress’s somewhat faded charms, Hilary Fletcher in The Upstart (1973) notes that marriage and children ‘had loosened her bones and skin and clouded those once fresh eyes with the film of age.’ Harriet, it turns out, is all of 26. Strickland, the barrister hero of A Married Man (1979) has an even worse time of it, what

Eric Christiansen

Hunting and working

Why are scholars so prone to melancholy? According to the expert, Robert Burton of Christ Church, it is because ‘they live a sedentary, solitary life… Why are scholars so prone to melancholy? According to the expert, Robert Burton of Christ Church, it is because ‘they live a sedentary, solitary life… free from bodily exercise and those ordinary disports that other men use.’ Not this one. The most remarkable characteristic of the young and maturing Trevor-Roper was his frenzied pursuit of foxes and hares on horse and foot, and his capacity for long marches through Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and the Borders in search of spiritual refreshment or a rendez-vous with a horse.

James Walton

Frustrating but enjoyable

If we didn’t already know that Milan Kundera is one of Craig Raine’s literary heroes, then it wouldn’t be too hard to work it out from his first novel. If we didn’t already know that Milan Kundera is one of Craig Raine’s literary heroes, then it wouldn’t be too hard to work it out from his first novel. As in Kundera’s later fiction (Immortality, Slowness, Identity, Ignorance), there’s the stark one-word title laying out the theme to be interrogated. There’s the same relentless erudition — so that even Raine’s two-page thematic scene-setter finds room for Dickens, Beckett, Auden and Henry James. More obviously still, there’s the same mix of straight