A hoot and a treasure

This is a wonderful book — lucid, funny, sharp, truthful, cheeky, generous, erudite, surprise-crammed, and emanating a delicious tang of sophisticated amusement. I would love to continue in this vein but I’m afraid I mustn’t. It’s just not right. You see, the book is a collection of literary columns written by Nick Hornby for an American magazine. Each month he reflects on whatever he happens to have been reading, and the editor has given him absolute freedom to clodhop where he will across the sods of literature provided he utters no word against any author. The editor means it. When Hornby badmouths some writer by accident he gets sin-binned for a month as punishment. Hence my reluctance to write a kind review of this collection of kind reviews. Damn kindness! We writers are full of envy and hate, aren’t we? OK. Out come the knives.

I’ve followed Hornby’s career with half an eye (or perhaps a little more) since he emerged in the early Nineties.