Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Wednesday

Caroline Moore

Welcome, little strangers

Listing page content here Every time I pick up the latest novel by Anne Tyler, I wonder whether she is quite as good as her fans, of which I am one, like to think. Is she, in fact, no more than the Thinking Woman’s Good Holiday Read? No more than that! many readers will exclaim (and perhaps, like Henry Tilney, add that men ‘read nearly as many as women’): only a thoroughly readable book that doesn’t insult your intelligence! Even outside the airport bookshop, we are all grateful to find such a treasure. But there are a lot of readable books out there of the sort recommended by the Richard

Saturday

Theodore Dalrymple

Medicine and letters | 13 May 2006

‘That Shakespeare,’ a German friend of mine once said to me, ‘knew a thing or two.’ ‘That Shakespeare,’ a German friend of mine once said to me, ‘knew a thing or two.’ You can say that again. Sometimes, indeed, I think he knew everything, at least everything about human nature. When a religious fanatic tells me that this or that holy scripture is all I need as a guide to life, I reply with a single exclamatory word, ‘Shakespeare!’ He even knew about — or perhaps I should say, anticipated — insurance and social security fraud. At any rate, they would not have surprised him, or an attentive reader of

Bevis Hillier

Books do furnish a TV series

Listing page content here When I was younger, I used to think, ‘If ever you become famous, on no account agree to be interviewed by Lynn (“Demon”) Barber.’ The call never came; but, if it had, I hope my resolve would have remained adamantine, whatever her blandishments. You can see what she made of her victims in her collected profiles, Mostly Men (1991). Richard Harris has ‘a very surprising habit’: he ‘plays pocket billiards’ throughout the interview. ‘He puts his hand down inside his tracksuit and sort of rearranges things.’ Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, is in floods of tears most of the time, even blubbing into his meat

Douglas Hurd

Ill-considered imperial gestures

Listing page content here During 1956 three major powers made dramatic efforts to prop up their position by the use of armed force. The British and French, in collusion with Israel, invaded Egypt to overthrow its dictator and regain the Suez Canal; their attempt failed within a few hours. The Soviet Union used its tanks to suppress a working-class revolt for the freedom of Hungary; despite the world’s execration they succeeded in re-establishing their control for another 30 years. It was the coincidence of these clashes which made the drama. Both came to a head in the same few days at the end of October. Peter Unwin comments and analyses

Sebastian Smee

Missing the middle path

Listing page content here Reading David Mitchell’s fourth novel, which is told through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy, reminded me why girls have little or no interest in the contents of boys’ heads until they are well out of their teens. It’s horrible in there. Thirteen-year-old boys, in particular, are revolting concoctions of fear and loathing, of hormones and confusion and clumsy self-assertion. This presents Mitchell, a writer of enormous talent but uncertain depth, with a problem. The truer and more lifelike he makes his narrator’s voice, the more he risks boring us silly with early teen preoccupations. But the more he uses art (in the form of stylish

Judith Flanders

The master and the loyal retainer

Listing page content here It was not easy to be an attendant at the court of King Pablo, for Picasso, ‘with his fringe of white hair round the back of his head, his never tiring black eyes, his red shirt, is always the centre of everyone’s thoughts, especially as everyone else’s movements depend on his and no one, not even he, knows what it will be’. It was no easier to be King Pablo: P. wanting everyone to enjoy themselves started making masks with the tablecloths and most of the guests put them on, but some began to smuggle them under the table as valuable souvenirs. P., seeing this, looked

Wednesday

Allan Mallinson

No end of a lesson

Listing page content here ‘We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.’ Kipling’s re- proof, in ‘The Lesson’, on the conduct of the Boer war would serve well as the subtitle of this impressive review of the mess that is the Iraq intervention. The authors are the chief military correspondent of the New York Times and a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and sometime military correspondent for the same newspaper. Their access to officials and classified documents is remarkable. They are certainly no apologists, unsurprisingly, coming from the NYT. Their intention is ‘to provide a comprehensive account and rationale of the foreign policy strategy, generalship and

Eric Anderson

Public skool monkey business

Listing page content here I misjudged this book. I thought the airport fiction promised by the literary editor would take me nicely to New York, where I was going the next day. However, at 846 pages, weighing in at one kilo, Jilly Cooper’s Wicked! is long enough to get you to Australia. On my second evening in America the waitress, after reciting in a sing-song monologue the specials for the evening, added, ‘And I also must recommend that you see Wicked, the musical, while you’re here.’ ‘What’s so good about it?’ I asked. ‘Oh, the flying monkeys,’ she said. ‘They’re marvellous and they really fly.’ It turned out to be

Alexander Waugh

The book that didn’t make the short list

Listing page content here The councils of the early Christian Church were not always agreeable occasions. The bishops quarrelled terribly, at times getting so angry with one another as to clash in frenzied battles of ripped clothes, flying fists, blood and broken noses on the council chamber floor. Of all the issues that most inflamed these holy men none was more contentious than the question of which books should be chosen to constitute the official canon of the New Testament. The bishop who finally won his way was one of the most violent and intimidating of them all, Athanasius of Alexandria, but it was not until 405 AD (some 40

Richard Ollard

Humanity makes all plain

Listing page content here The title of this well edited and interesting book is misleading. First it suggests a complete collection, which would, if it were ever accomplished, require several volumes. Second, the letters, though mostly written by Pepys, include a considerable number of those written to him and even occasional papers which are not letters at all but throw light on incidents that were important to his career. These are all well chosen and their annotation makes their significance clear to the reader who is not already a knowledgeable Pepysian.Pepys’s letters, though always characteristic and generally well expressed, have not the piercing quality of the Diary. His addiction to

Saturday

Ronald Segal

The most sinful of the seven

Michael Dyson is Foundation Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the author of 12 previous books, and an ordained Baptist minister. Pride is his own contribution to a series of linked lectures and books on the seven deadly sins. There is no doubting the primacy of pride among the seven. The Greeks had a word for it. As hubris, presumption or arrogance, it loomed large, often along with its retribution or nemesis, in drama, poetry, history, philosophy. In the development of Christian theology, St Augustine saw pride as the source of original sin, and Pope Gregory confirmed it as

Emma Tennant

Songs of prayer and praise

The Church of Scotland has recently published a new edition of its hymnary, the first for 30 years. A committee of ministers had the difficult task of deciding which of the old hymns to reject in order to make room for the new songs — many of them from Africa and South America — which have ‘enlivened worship’ over the last few decades. John Bell, who convened the committee, tells us in his introduction that the aim was ‘to combine the best of the new hymnary with the cherished and rich tradition that had nourished and sustained previous generations, and so sound forth the eternal gospel in a world constantly

Stephen Abell

Swansong at twilight

It is, if you stop to think about it, an important literary question: what, exactly, is the point of short stories? They so often can — to this reader at least — be dismissed merely as stunted or early-aborted novels, a single idea gestated in the writer’s imagination that has inescapably failed to divide, multiply and develop into a full-grown body of work. They feel incomplete, inconsequential, unsatisfying. Fortunately, Francis King has shown us a (perhaps the) redeeming feature. He has realised that a short story is the perfect form to tell of shortened existence, of life not being allowed fully to develop or finally being brought to an end.

Charlotte Moore

Missing the happiness boat

‘Competitive and rapacious and amoral and moralising and just plain mad.’ That’s how middle-class American motherhood seemed to Judith Warner when she returned to the ‘pressure cooker’ of Washington DC after having her first child in Paris, where she had enjoyed the readily available support and relaxed attitude to parenting that French mothers apparently take for granted. Perfect Madness arises from Warner’s conversations with American parents in their thirties and forties — educated, able, affluent people who ought to be leading happy and fulfilled lives. Instead, she finds a society fuelled by neurotic anxiety. She meets intelligent women whose intellectual horizons have narrowed to ‘tracking down the last gram of

Marcus Berkmann

Portable and to the point

An old biographer friend of mine, having churned out several lives of the great over the years, eventually told me over a boozy and depressing lunch that he had had enough, and that he wouldn’t be writing another one ‘for as long as I live’. As it happens he didn’t live that long, but you can still see his point. The literary biography has become such a massive, thumping, thudding beast, vaster than books have a right to be, that the prospect of opening another one weighs heavily on the heart, and several other parts of the body as well. How has this ridiculous situation come to pass? One hesitates

Ben Wilson

Keeping the best of order

The preceding volume in the New Oxford History of England, covering the years 1727-1783, described the people as ‘polite and commercial’. Boyd Hilton does not imbue their sons and daughters with Byronic qualities, as his title might suggest; rather, it expresses the extreme volatility of the period. In the 1820s 60 per cent of the population were no older than 24. This generation had known little respite from war and its dismal aftermath, frequent and biting economic depressions, scarcity of food and recurrent unrest. Malthus’s warning of the destructive power of population growth and millenarian prophecies of the Apocalypse offered scant reassurance. The 63 years from the loss of the

William Feaver

Trademarking the ordinary

Lecterns have been installed in some bookshops enabling customers to flip through the 625 tabloid-format pages of what must be the largest volume ever devoted to a single modern artist. Andy Warhol ‘Giant’ Size is Warhol the Lot, a bulk buy, a gross amplitude of Warhol the Simple, Warhol the Smart and Warhol the Resourceful Blank capitalising on paradox and incorrigibility. Weightlifters could try, I suppose, for a Buy One Get One Free deal: two vols screwed to a plank, ideal for workout purposes. Alternatively, imagine Buster Keaton doggedly lugging his copy down Charing Cross Road and dumping it — perfect timing — in front of a runaway bendy bus.

Jean Hayes

His Day

Saint George has spent years in denial.His image has had a bad press.There’s been, as shrinks say, for some whileA problem he needs to address. I suppose it’s not really surprisingHe’s pining for something to clout,For even with wide advertisingThere aren’t many dragons about. And where is the Maiden Worth Saving?(To find any maiden is rare.)White flags with red crosses are waving.His country is deep in despair. This England is full of old womenWho’d love to be saved by a Saint.The Union flag needed trimming.Old age is disguised by war paint. There’s a wild Paper Dragon in BrusselsWhose fierce breath brings tears to old eyes.Our Patron is flexing his muscles.Saint

Saturday

Interconnect

The march of folly

This wonderful small book brings to an end much journalistic nonsense that followed 11 September 2001 in its definitive treatment of its causes and repercussions. To the Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan, what happened on that day was a natural conclusion to decades of Arab frustration and Western neglect. Honourably, but not totally successfully, he tries to be condemning of both sides. The sweep of his broad, sensitive and near perfect judgment cancels the importance of individuals, Osama bin Laden included, and focuses instead on the march of folly, which promises more such catastrophes in the future. However, bin Laden is still central to the tale. Atwan begins his narrative

Charlotte Hobson

The heart and stomach of a king

When Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst arrived at the Russian court in 1744, one of the many daughters of minor German royal houses who came to St Petersburg in the hope of an advantageous marriage, she was just 15 and ‘as ugly as a scarecrow’ after a severe illness. Her future husband, the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Peter, was a bizarre character whose main interests were his toy soldiers and ‘romping’ with his valets. No one, unsurprisingly, recognised in her the future Catherine II, one of Russia’s greatest rulers, who was to preside over a vast expansion of Russian territory, the flourishing of St Petersburg, the huge collection of