A soft tread and a sure touch
Short stories are best read one a night just before you go to sleep, and this collection by Angela Huth, which brings together work from the last 30 years, would keep you going for nearly a month.
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Saturday
Not eating or cheating
‘She was like a bride, they said, festooned in ribbons and bows, a large crucifix resting on her bosom,’ records Si
The boy who saw too much and too little
Already a bestseller in the many countries where it has been published, I’m Not Scared was described to me as a modern version of The Go-Between. After struggling through the wooden introduction to a group of children cycling up a hill somewhere in the south of Italy, I was steeling myself for one of those
A palely loitering revenant
‘Reviewers,’ laments the Dr Cake of Andrew Motion’s title, ‘they are devils. Devils. I have seen good men, good authors, broken by their deprecations. The worst of it is their presumption in supposing that those they chastise do not know their own faults, and admonish themselves with a ferocity others can only imagine.’ From a
The Stuart we fail to remember
In 1066 and All That there is a spoof exam question: ‘How can you be so numb and vague about Arbella Stuart?’ All the same, her name means little today. If she is known at all, it is as one of those fiendishly muddling and worryingly inbred claimants to the Tudor succession who all seem
Bum ego trip
‘Our lives are one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity,’ remarks Augusten (pronounced You-gusten, by the way) Burroughs as he creeps towards the end of what must be one of the strangest and most engrossingly repellent memoirs of dysfunctional American family life ever to be
One man’s prime numbers
When you are a bestselling novelist you get to do things your way. So this isn’t 32 Songs, which would at least be a power of two, or even 30 Songs, but the defiantly prime 31 Songs, because that, says Nick Hornby, is how long the book needs to be. But then the millions of
The Russian language front
During the war against Hitler, secret services recruited on the old boy net: there was no other way of being sure that recruits were not duds, and even on the old boy net bad mistakes could be made – Philby and Maclean were only the most notable examples. All that was supposed to vanish with
Radiance in suburbia
Shena Mackay has had a difficult and unconventional career, and it has taken a long time for most readers to register what a powerful and original novelist she is. Several things have counted, unfairly, against her; her subjects are not just domestic, but often suburban, which she presents with a disconcerting rapture. She does not
Saturday
Only slightly under the influence
‘The Age of Russia,’ according to the doom-fraught speculations Oswald Spengler published in 1918, would succeed ‘the Decline of the West’. For a while, it looked as if he was right. Russia’s non-western credentials became part of the rhetoric of Soviet foreign policy. Hailed as ‘the future which works’, Russia was earnestly copied by escapers
A palpable hit
If you happen to be one of those maddeningly quick-witted or sideways-thinking readers who can spot at a glance that ‘potty train (4)’ means LOCO, that ‘Where reluctant Scotsman lives (7)’ is LOTHIAN, or even – a lovely one, this – that ‘Amundson’s forwarding address (4)’ is MUSH, the pages of Sandy Balfour’s memoir will
Looking – and looking away
Sebald is perturbed by the almost complete failure of German writers to describe the devastation of their country by British and American bombers during the second world war. Here, one might have thought, was an inescapable subject, a reality which confronted anyone who was in Germany during or after the war. About 600,000 civilians were
When Irish eyes were smiling
THE SHADOWS OF ELISA LYNCHby Si
Homage to A. B. Roger
Woodruff, you have not come to Oxford to take examinations, you have come to learn. The whole purpose of Oxford is learning. Buoyed up by the instant success of the first volume of his autobiography, William Woodruff and his English publishers have understandably decided to cash in on the Nab End brand in this, the
Why is a birch-tree like a melon?
This is the time of year for armchair gardening. The cold, dark days give one the chance to ignore the muddy plot outside and to sit by the fire with a heap of catalogues. As one reads the thrilling descriptions, next summer’s garden comes to life in the mind’s eye. There are no rabbits, mice,
She fashioned her future
Judging by her own ideals of beauty and drama, Diana Dalziel’s arrival in the world must have been a bit of a let-down. That her Scottish father’s lineage merely went back to 834, or that her mother was part of the narrow 1890s New York society, was not half as picturesque as she’d have liked.
Articles of faith
Richard Dawkins loves fighting. More precisely, he loves winning. To be Dawkinsed, as this selection from his essays of the past 25 years makes painfully clear, is not just to be dressed down or duffed up: it is to be squelched, pulverised, annihilated, rendered into suitably primordial paste. Those who incur this treatment have one
Saturday
Liquid and solid satisfaction
Cocoa beans were ‘found’ by Europeans on Columbus’s fourth, final and failed voyage (1502). The beans were sufficiently rare to be used as currency and the beverage made from them was called ‘Food of the Gods’ and only served to Amerindian grandees like Montezuma – in his case, in gold cups. The liquid was laced,
I was a camera
Julia Margaret Cameron is hip. This would not have astonished her – she had every confidence in her vision as a photographer – but for many decades she has been regarded merely as the female face of the male act, someone who created pretty-pretty photographs of allegorical or religious scenes, with the odd Great Man
The hunter hunted
Abbie Devereaux, the heroine of Land of the Living, finds herself hooded and bound and a prisoner of a man who is just a whispering voice. She has a violent headache and cannot remember anything about how she has come to be lying on concrete in this damp, smelly place, or even anything leading up