Fiction

As ever, the Spectator carries some splendid and erudite book reviews this week. There are contributions from stellar writers and thinkers such as Margaret MacMillan, Susan Hill, Alexander Chancellor and John Sutherland. Here is a selection. Margaret MacMillan is captivated by Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, a ‘lovely lush book’ edited by Angus Trumble. But, even as she peruses the glorious pictures and accompanying essays, her mind cannot escape the horrors of what the painters had overlooked and what was to come: ‘The Edwardian nostalgia, well-illustrated here, for an older world was rather like the passion for organic farming and the slow food movement

The longlist for the 2013 Booker Prize has been announced (it is below). Most of the commentary surrounding the announcement is about the length of chosen books. Robert Macfarlane, who led the judging panel, has spoken of the thrill of including Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary (112 pages), Richard House’s The Kills (912-pages) and 28-year-old Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries (832 pages) on the same list. Jim Crace’s Harvest has made the cut, which will please his fans because he has said that Harvest is his last novel. Macfarlane’s panel – Martha Kearney, Stuart Kelly, Natalie Haynes and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst –  will deliberate over the summer. The shortlist will be announced on 10th September

Faced with a book as simple and true as Stoner, it’s easy to fall into the trap of intentional fallacy. It is the portrait of a quiet farm boy, who receives his Doctorate of Philosophy, teaches literature at the University of Missouri, then dies at the age of sixty-five. His colleagues hold him in no particular esteem. We know all this from the first page. This story of hard graft without recognition, gratifyingly, for literary sleuths, has parallels with the author’s life and the reception of his work. John Williams’ grandparents were farmers and, after completing his PhD in Missouri, he taught at the University of Denver for the following

Senility is a cunning mistress. She’s always finding new ways to twist your melon, man. The latest trick she’s playing on me is Western House Syndrome. I should point out before we go any further that I’m not talking about real senility. Still only in my early forties, I have just as strong a grip on reality as any man of that age with a young child stealing more of his sleep than he feels comfortable with. But even a relative whippersnapper like me knows the gentle failings of memory which get that little bit more noticeable every year. They’re only at the ‘have I put sugar in that tea?’

Is it okay for struggling authors to talk about promotion and marketing and how they are dealt with by publishers? Apparently so.  The aspiring novelist Robert Galbraith knew rejection. His first novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, was rejected by Orion and other publishers before it was printed in April by Sphere, a prestige imprint of Little Brown, one of the biggest names in fiction. He must have been beside himself when his little detective story was singled out for praise by Val McDermid, Mark Billingham and Alex Gray – all leading practitioners in the genre. The icing on the cake probably came when The Times, the Mail and Publishers Weekly joined

Clive James was a recurring presence in last weekend’s literary press. There was, I regret to say, a valedictory feel to the coverage. Robert McCrum, of the Guardian, was not so much suggestive as openly morbid: ‘If word of his death has been exaggerated, there’s no question, on meeting him, that he’s into injury time, with a nagging cough that punctuates our conversation.’ If those words and others like them made little impact on the reader, then the photograph of James that illustrates McCrum’s interview might. Old age looks no fun; serious illness even less so. But, James’ spirit does not seem to have been shaken by the indignities visited upon

The Vet’s Daughter is Barbara Comyns’s fourth and most startling novel. Written in 1959 when she was 50 it is the first in which she shows mastery of the structures of a fast-moving narrative and a consistent backdrop to the ecstasies and agonies of the human condition. It was received with excitement, widely reviewed, praised by Graham Greene, reprinted, made into a play, serialised by the BBC, and adapted as a musical (called The Clapham Wonder) by Sandy Wilson of The Boyfriend. But although the book has been kept in print by Virago since 1981 its reputation has faded, probably because the shock of the magical realism of its final

This week’s issue of the Spectator is packed with book reviews. Here’s a selection of quotes to whet your appetite. Old China hand Jonathan Mirsky finds much to applaud in Rana Mitter’s history of the Sino-Japanese war. ‘Into the Fifties, as Mitter outlines, a storm gathered in the US over ‘who lost China’; and those Americans who had praised Mao and had urged Washington to deal seriously with him were vilified — chiefly by Senator McCarthy — as ‘Comsymps’ who had engineered the ‘loss’. All this is well handled by Mitter. But he appears not to know that one significant figure, John Service, a China-born foreign service officer, more than

The BBC adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s The White Queen, which began last Sunday, has led numerous books editors to pick their 10 best historical novels. I played this silly dinner party game last year (although I forget the inspiration). And, while admitting that it was nigh on impossible to pick 10, I came up with: J.G. Farrell’s Empire Trilogy Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander Robert Graves’s I Claudius JM Coetzee’s Disgrace Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Pat Barker’s Regeneration Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard There were some

Nothing in Bryan Appleyard’s Bedford Park betrays the fact that it is his first period novel: not its deft characterisations, its virtuoso dialogue, its dry and economical wit, or its choice of a narrator and material quite outside the author’s own experience. The 19th century is closing and the 20th is opening in a London seething with foreign sedition and the antics of its own wayward men of genius. The enchanted suburb of Bedford Park, a baroque gem created in 1875 as part of an architectural counter-revolution and renewal, houses W.B. Yeats and the novel’s narrator, Calhoun Kidd.  Kidd has fled Chicago and his domineering father. However, he enters London

I was on a train when it happened. I was bent double with my head between my knees, gasping for air and unable to speak. The Surrey matriarch sitting opposite leant forward to ask me if she could help. I imagine she thought that I was choking, or perhaps suffering cardiac arrest. In fact, I was laughing. Laughing so hard I couldn’t stop. And the more I wanted to stop, the worse it got. It was painful. My lungs rasped and the muscles in my sides contracted of their own free will. I was no longer master of myself, so you might say that I was in ecstasy. It was