They fill you with the faults they had

You attempt to write a review with a stiff dose of objectivity, but it’s hard not to start with a degree of fondness for an anthology put together by a magician who has performed in North Korea. Dale Salwak also has a sideline as a professor of literature at Citrus College in Los Angeles, and Writers and their Mothers is a collection of 22 pieces he has edited, by novelists, poets and literary critics, some biographical and analytical, some autobiographical.

In his introduction, Salwak makes reference to an assertion by Georges Simenon that writers are ‘united in their hatred of their mothers’, an assertion, I’d suggest, that tells you much more about the whore-mongering Simenon than about writers in general.

The first contribution is Hugh Macrae Richmond’s ‘Shakespeare’s Mother(s)’. It makes sense to start with the boss, but I would have thought that a showman like Salwak would have played a stronger opening card.