Book Reviews

Pamela Anderson’s life story contains several showbiz-beauty clichés: an abusive childhood, accidental fame and many marriages. Unlike Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth, she didn’t grow up with the Hollywood studio system, so there were no brilliant writers and directors laid on to make her acting career memorable. But the absence of this structure – in which women were deemed past it at 35 – also meant that she could do much as she pleased at an age when those earlier sex symbols were distraught, depressed or dead. Ten years ago she was branded ‘delinquent’ for running up $493,000 in unpaid taxes and moving to a trailer park in

This year is the Chinese Year of the Rabbit. The spring festival began on 22 January, and in Chinese culture the rabbit represents the moon. Some say it is because the shadows in the moon resemble the animal, but it also reflects its characteristics. The rabbit’s quiet personality hides its confidence and strength: it is moving, steadily moving, towards its goal, whatever the obstacles. Some also say that it lives in fear all the time, finds it difficult to open up to others and often turns to escapism. I never really thought about the meaning of a ‘rabbit’s pure characteristics’ in Chinese daily life until I read these two books

Halfway up the high street in Totnes, a small town on the river Dart in Devon, a modest stone is set into the edge of the road. It claims to mark the point at which Brutus, legendary founder of Britain, first set foot on this island. The grandson of the equally legendary Trojan hero Aeneas, Brutus was said to have been born in Rome; but, exiled from his birthplace, he travelled western Europe before finally settling here. Most of us carry with us a little Neanderthal DNA. We are all mongrels of a sort That the legend of Brutus was a ninth-century fantasy concocted by a Welsh monk named Nennius

If there were ever a Spectator competition for the best pastiche of the opening words of a Salman Rushdie novel, a pretty good entry might be: ‘On the last day of her life, when she was two hundred and forty-seven years old, the blind poet, miracle worker and prophetess Pampa Kampana completed her immense narrative poem about Bisnaga.’ By coincidence, these are also the opening words of Victory City, a book Rushdie finished not long before last summer’s stabbing. And, as it turns out, that first sentence sets the scene for much of what follows – because the novel takes its place alongside the likes of John Updike’s Villages (about

‘This is a book about how you don’t get over it,’ You Are Not Alone begins. If you’re new to bereavement, looking for a way through the death of a loved one, perhaps this doesn’t scream of optimism. But Cariad Lloyd’s warmth, generosity and gentle pragmatism makes her book one of the most reassuring I have read. She is a member of ‘the club’ – the Dead Dad Club. Her father died 24 years ago of pancreatic cancer when she was 15. She is also the host of the award-winning podcast Griefcast, through which she has interviewed many bereaved individuals – comedians, writers, actors, chefs, artists – who have suffered