Books
Thoroughly modern Melanie
This exhilaratingly lowbrow first novel concentrates on money and lust or, to put it more bluntly, sex and the City.…
Gin and boiled cabbage with George Orwell
The Orwellian past is a foreign country; smells are different there. Pipe smoke and carbolic, side notes of horse dung…
The bitchy world of ballet
Memoirs of old men, baldly, tend to be tricky. Sir Peter Wright, one of the founding pillars of the British…
In the gutter, insulting the stars
John McEntee — ‘the Chancer from Cavan’, as he bills himself — has enjoyed a long career as a gossip…
Listen with Mother
Ian McEwan’s novels are drawn to enclosed spaces. There is the squash court upon which the surgeon plays a meticulously…
Revolution was in the air
The Penguin History of Europe reaches its seventh volume (out of nine) with Richard J. Evans’s thorough and wide-ranging work…
Murky subjects, misty settings
A short-story renaissance has been promised since 2013. That year Alice Munro won the Nobel, Lydia Davis won the Booker…
A masterpiece of mesmerising beauty
In the beginning was Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, pleached and Proustian, released in February 1960. This was followed soon after,…
Grubby, funny shaggy dog story
The Mexican author Juan Pablo Villa-lobos’s first short novel, Down the Rabbit Hole (Fiesta en la madriguera), was published in…
One scorching summer long ago
It was the brightest of futures; it was the End of Days. Three hundred and fifty years before Brexit, England…
The don’ts of ‘parenting’
In the American way, the child psychologist Alison Gopnik’s new book has an attractive sound-bitey title dragging a flat-footed subtitle…
Aussie exceptionalism
It would have once been uncontroversial to suggest nations have characteristics that not only distinguish them from other countries, but…
Aussie exceptionalism
It would have once been uncontroversial to suggest nations have characteristics that not only distinguish them from other countries, but…
Chinese whispers
Peter Ho Davies’s second novel, The Fortunes, is a beautifully crafted study, in four parts, of the history of the…
The key to a hidden kingdom
It’s a modern pastime to hypothesise about what makes a good relationship. One evening not long ago in a Berlin…
A view to a kill
A certain sort of male novelist will always aspire to be Joseph Conrad. The seedy cosmopolitanism of his fiction and…
Tales out of school
At first glance Sean O’Brien’s new novel appears to focus on England’s devotion to the past. Even its title carries…
Girls about town
On 8 June 1920 an old beggar woman sat against a wall in Kingsway holding a mongrel in her arms…
Crying Wolfe
He might be 85 but Tom Wolfe is going strong with a new book and a dustjacket photo that still…
Doctor who?
On 25 July 1865, during a heatwave, Dr James Barry died of dysentery in his London lodgings. A charwoman came…
No happy endings
Between agreeing to review this book and receiving it, I got worried. Like many, I adore Doctor Zhivago with its…
Gale-force lyricism
Centuries before their footballers learned giant-slaying ways, Icelanders knew how to startle the world with tall stories. In the moonscape…
All about C
In March 1981 Margaret Thatcher went to the hospital bedside of Maurice Oldfield, the former head of the Secret Intelligence…
The Capability controversy
In a piece of light verse from the 1770s ‘Dame Nature’ — out strolling ‘one bright day’ — bumps into…
White trash
Hillbilly Elegy is an extended meditation on cultural and social capital. It asks seriously – and answers truthfully – this…
