Book review – essays
The joyless rants of Andrea Long Chu
The critic’s modishly provocative takedowns of successful contemporary writers, signed off with vapid aphorisms, make for dispiriting rather than stimulating reading
Sebastian Faulks looks back on youth and lost idealism
The novelist describes key moments in his life from boarding school onwards in essays originally intended to discuss ‘the things that have meant the most to me’
Enemy of the Disaster: Selected Political Writings of Renaud Camus, reviewed
The French writer does not accept that all incomers to his country can be truly ‘French’, and considers the dramatic change of population an unprecedented disaster
David Sedaris, the current king of humorists, is often not funny at all
Since the 17th century, a ‘humourist’ has been a witty person, and especially someone skilled in literary comedy. In 1871,…
The changing face of war and heroism
On War and Writing by Samuel Hynes is hardly about war at all. There is little about combat here, or…
It’s impossible to live up to the expectations of motherhood
In a 1974 interview celebrating the quarter century since the publication of her classic The Second Sex (1949), Simone de…
Every day is mother’s day for writers: most have strong feelings about their mothers, though not always of love
You attempt to write a review with a stiff dose of objectivity, but it’s hard not to start with a…
Brilliant essayists, dark and fair
Read cover to cover, a book of essays gives you the person behind it: their voice, the trend of their…
A Muslim’s insights into Christianity
I’m not a critic, I’m an enthusiast. And when you are an enthusiast you need to try your best to…
A poet in prose
Literary reputation can be a fickle old business. Those garlanded during their lifetimes are often quickly forgotten once dead. Yet…
… trailing strands in all directions
Letters of Intent — letters of the intense. Keen readers of Cynthia Ozick (are there any other kind?) will of…
… and sense and sensibility
Book reviews, John Updike once wrote, ‘perform a clear and desired social service: they excuse us from reading the books…
Alive and kicking
Four years after his death, it is still faintly surprising to recall that Christopher Hitchens is no longer resident on…
Age cannot wither her
There’s something reassuring about 98-year-old Diana Athill. She’s stately and well-ordered, like the gardens at Ditchingham Hall in Norfolk, her…
These I have loved
In the preface to his great collection of essays The Dyer’s Hand, W.H. Auden claimed: ‘I prefer a critic’s notebooks…
A 50-year infatuation
The subject of the least characteristic essay in this engrossing collection of meditations on painters, painters’ lives, painting and reactions…
Pessimism keeps breaking in
State-of-criticism overviews and assessments almost always strike a bleak note —the critical mind naturally angles towards pessimism — so it…
The abundant charms of a playful cupid
Lesley Blanch (1904–2007) will be remembered chiefly for her gloriously extravagant The Wilder Shores of Love, the story of four…
Staring into the abyss
The first interaction between two men recorded in the Bible involves a murder. In the earliest classic of English literature,…
