One of the duties of a reviewer is to alert potential readers to the flavour and content of a book, particularly if it comes into the category of ‘not a suitable present for your great-aunt’. I always dislike this duty, since it spoils surprises, which are the essence of enjoyment in reading; but Adam Thirlwell’s
One could have endless fun setting quiz questions about Georges Perec. Which French novelist had a scientific paper, ‘Experimental demonstration of the Tomatotropic organisation in the Soprano (Cantatrix sopranico L)’ included in a scientific festschrift at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique? (The article charted the ‘yelling reaction’ — YR —of singers pelted with
Thomas Keneally has constructed his latest novel around a framework of true events: the mass break-out of Japanese PoWs from a camp in New South Wales. This intrinsically thrilling incident, triggered by a fascinating clash between mutually uncomprehending cultures, is an obvious gift to a writer. There may be some who claim that any novelist
In the autumn of 2012, Philip Roth told a French magazine that his latest book, Nemesis, would be his last. The storm of interest this created was surprising, given that he was 78. His creative spurt in his seventies (inexplicable, according to Roth: ‘my breakfast cereal stayed the same’) had given fans the illusion that,
There is a hoary Cold War joke about a newly invented translating machine. On a test run, the CIA scientists feed in ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’, press the button to translate it into Russian, and then re-translate it into English. It emerges as ‘The vodka is passable, but the meat
Manil Suri’s novel is like a ‘masala movie’ — a Bombay mix of genres, spicy, often subtle, often corny, and distinctly addictive. It is difficult to pin down its overriding flavour. A reviewer on the back cover notes that ‘Manil Suri has been likened to Narayan, Coetzee, Chekhov and Flaubert’; but there are twinkly sprinklings
Some readers may wonder if we need this book. Surely, the argument might go, one can summon up potted ‘lives’ on the internet, while serious biographies take book form. And how can even 294 lives of novelists offer, as the cover to this book claims, ‘a comprehensive history of the English novel’? Reason not the
My main disappointment with this collection of stories was that I had already read six of them, in publications ranging from the New Yorker to the Guardian. This, however, only goes to prove the eagerness with which I seize upon Julian Barnes’ intelligent and subtle writing wherever it may first appear. Barnes’ two previous collections
If you have not yet gone on holiday, do pack The Anatomy of Ghosts. It is excellent airport reading; and this is no trivial recommendation. Airports are where one needs fiction most desperately — and nowhere more so than in Kabul, where I had to work through no fewer than seven queues for incompetent security
Yann Martel’s second novel, The Life of Pi, a fable with animals, won the Man Booker Prize in 2002 and was translated into 38 languages. Yann Martel’s second novel, The Life of Pi, a fable with animals, won the Man Booker Prize in 2002 and was translated into 38 languages. The narrator of Beatrice and
Final Demands is the third volume in Frederic Raphael’s trilogy, which began with the publication of The Glittering Prizes in 1976. Final Demands is the third volume in Frederic Raphael’s trilogy, which began with the publication of The Glittering Prizes in 1976. The second in the series, Fame and Fortune, did not follow until 2007;
Charles Moore I wish the Pope’s new offer to Anglicans had been available when I became a Catholic 15 years ago. It would have helped avoid many misunderstandings. In modern times, most Anglicans converting to Roman Catholicism are not trying to repudiate their existing beliefs. Instead, they are recognising that the logic of those beliefs
Free association underpins the comedy of Lorrie Moore’s writing — or perhaps the verb should be ‘unpins’, since her prose spins off in tangential, apparently affectless riffs. Free association underpins the comedy of Lorrie Moore’s writing — or perhaps the verb should be ‘unpins’, since her prose spins off in tangential, apparently affectless riffs. Even
How do you describe novels written by a Fellow of All Souls, laced with extreme post-modern self-consciousness and lavish with cultural references, but revolving almost entirely around graphic permutations of the sexual act? As a genre, it can surely only be called clever-dick-lit. This is Adam Thirlwell’s second foray into this exclusive terrain. His first
The Children’s Book, by A. S. Byatt I should declare an interest. Nineteen years ago, I believe that A. S. Byatt saved the lives of my unborn twins. When I went into premature labour at 22 weeks, I was rushed into hospital, put on a drip, and told it was absolutely vital Not to Panic.
And Then There Was No One, by Gilbert Adair And Then There Was No One is a metaphysical murder mystery, a deconstructionist detective story, a post-modern puzzle — all of which could, very, very easily, become as arch and wearisome as persistent alliteration. But Gilbert Adair — though fantastically clever-clever, and horribly addicted not only
Love All, by Elizabeth Jane Howard Love All is a dreadful title — sounds like the memoirs of a lesbian tennis player — for an elegantly old-fashioned novel. It is set in the late 1960s; but there is little to anchor it to this period: the occasional references to the Beatles, or to Mary Quant,
Why re-write Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus as The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein? The rewriting of well-known novels generally depends upon two techniques. The first involves recasting the narrator: telling the tale from a different point of view, usually that of the historical underdog (women, servants, woodworm, etc). The second is to update the novel,
The title of Isabel Fonseca’s first novel is promisingly witty: an ‘attachment’ is both a supplement to an e-mail, and a bond of human intimacy; and the main plot of the novel revolves around how the first may destroy the second. Jean Hubbard is a freelance health correspondent, living on a tropical island, from which
In one of the stories in this collection, a woman whose sister has died of anorexia remembers ‘an incident when she was maybe eight and I was twelve’ when the little girls encountered a flasher: . . . it sort of jumped out and curled up, in a way that I now might recognise. At