Book Reviews

Kate Petty Recently, I read Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson. It was a set book for school and I sat down reluctantly to begin reading it in the morning; five hours later I was still sitting in exactly the same place, completely engrossed in the story. The voice of the protagonist, a young girl from York in the 1950s, stayed with me long after I had finished it: not necessarily at the forefront of my mind, but as a lingering presence that subtly changed my perspective on all manner of things.   Although The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a play, it manages to have

Exciting news. New York Magazine reports that Jesse Eisenberg has been cast in a film adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella, The Double. Eisenberg is to be directed by Richard Ayoade, known to British audiences for his comedic roles in The IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh and Man to Man with Dean Learner. Ayoade made his directorial debut earlier this year with Submarine, which was adapted from Joe Dunthorne’s adored novel of the same name. The plot of The Double revolves around Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, a government clerk who finds he has been replaced by a man with his exact likeness. The tale, first published in Russian as Dvoynik in 1846, sets

The civilised world has always needed a lingua franca, through which educated people of international outlook can communicate with each other. For centuries that language was Latin, first the language of theology, then of learning — Erasmus, Milton and Thomas More communicated with a wide community of scholars in Latin. Nowadays, the international language of commerce and culture is English, and from Peru to Shanghai the employees of multinationals talk in their barbarous English idiolects of blue-sky thinking and learning curves, just as their children chant along to the lyrics of West Coast rap. Between the age of Erasmus and that of Ricky Martin, there occurred the supremacy of the

Marcus Berkmann writes the Bookends column for this week’s issue of The Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog: Of all the great cultural shifts of recent years, the rise to respectability of American comics may be the strangest. Once, Superman, Batperson and the like were just lowbrow trash for kids, but while some of us were looking in the opposite direction they acquired legendary status and became the cornerstones of Western civilisation. Now every other new film features a superhero, backed up by astounding special effects and a marketing budget that could start a small war. Excellent timing, then, for British comics author Grant Morrison to produce

Here’s some news that you may have missed from last week: World Book Night is to be extended to America. The American arm will be led by Carl Lennertz, currently with Harper Collins, and former head of marketing at Foyles, Julia Kingsford, is to become chief executive of the whole charity. The organisers hope that World Book Night is going to live up to its name and make the love of reading and books a global experience. The event opened in Britain earlier this year and it was an unqualified success. The spectacle of thousands of people donating 1 million books to strangers on Britain’s streets was extensively featured in

In November 1844, Dostoyevsky finished writing his first story. He confides in Diary of a Writer that he had ‘written nothing before that time’. Having recently finished translating Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet, he suddenly felt inspired to write a tale ‘of the same dimensions’. But he was not only prompted by artistic aspirations. In a letter to his brother, Mikhail, just a few months earlier, he mentions being satisfied with a work-in-progress, and his hopes for greater financial stability: ‘I may get 400 rubles for it,’ he wrote, ‘and therein lie all my hopes.’ First published in 1846, Poor Folk was both a critical and financial success, with one prominent critic