Books
Sarah Collins
“Adorable cock, nothing too dramatic, suitable for many situations,” remarks Monica on the penis of her university boyfriend. She is the candid protagonist of ‘Sentimental Education’, the second of 19 short stories that form Grand Union, an eclectic, wide-ranging collection that is both joyful and unsettling in its exploration of philosophical, existential and political themes. ‘Sentimental Education’ showcases the Smith we know and love, who creates characters both exquisitely observed and impossibly eccentric. Monica, who sees men as muses, is just one among many. She cherishes the feeling Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Joanna Cannon was a wild card. She left school at 15 with one O-level and after various jobs, including working as a barmaid, she was given a place at medical school. The admissions professor accepted a wild card a year, someone whose path had been unconventional. She trained through her 30s and qualified in her 40s. She subsequently practiced as an NHS psychiatrist — but only for a few years. After her first novel become a best-seller, she left. Her experiences indicate that the emotional toll was too much, but she has now published this series of tightly argued glimpses into her Read more ...
Stephanie Sy-Quia
The Topeka School begins with a female listener getting bored of hearing her boyfriend talk. Which did not bode well, as the perspective’s was the boyfriend, and I am a female reader. Such a self-effacing move is typically Lerneresque: he excels at agonising over the politics of the body he inhabits (a white straight American man), only to then let his agonising become bigger and baggier. Adam and Amber are sitting in a boat in a manmade lake of an evening in Topeka, Kansas. Adam has been talking declaring their hope that they will keep seeing each other after he leaves for college. “ Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Lucian Freud was never an entirely willing subject, but his remark to William Feaver that his biography would be “the first funny art book”, now seems more astute than throwaway. It is entertaining, certainly, but it is also a singular mixture of biography and autobiography, answering to neither, and yet exceeding the bounds of both, while presenting a collaborative effort that “book” seems hardly adequate to cover.This first volume of two takes us to 1968 and its physical heft reflects the scale of the project, which began in 1973 when the critic and author Wiliam Feaver met Freud to Read more ...
Jasper Rees
We like to think of ourselves as a nation of eccentrics, but some take their patriotic duties more seriously than others. Al Alvarez – poet, critic, poker player, rock climber, old-school literary mensch, who has died at the age of 90 – took his first dip in the ponds on Hampstead Heath at 11. Sixty-five years later, he was still at it. Here’s a standard journal entry – for 31 January 2004: “The water was just above freezing, the wind howled, the rain stung my face when I swam on my back. I came out feeling wonderful.”Alvarez swam as he lived and wrote, on the assumption that there’s no Read more ...
Stephanie Sy-Quia
October 5th in the United States is a day for righteous rage. In 2016 it marked the release of the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape in which Donald Trump made his now-infamous “grab them by the pussy” comment. In 2017, it was the date the New York Times published their first story on Hollywood king-pin producer Harvey Weinstein. In 2018 it was the date on which the Senate saw fit to advance Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s work concerns Weinstein, but is bookended by Trump and Kavanaugh. She Said tells the story of their investigation for Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Over the past four decades Martin Gayford, The Spectator’s art critic, has travelled the world, been published in an amazing range of print and digital publications and written more than 20 books, many of them involving his fascination not only with looking at art, but also its making.Several, including Looking at Pictures, have been collaborations with David Hockney. Man in a Blue Scarf, his account of sitting 250 hours for his portrait by Lucian Freud, is a classic. He has also published books on Michelangelo, Constable, and Van Gogh. His association with art is deeply personal. His Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
This is a book about experiences that go beyond reading about art. Martin Gayford’s 20 short essays about press trips and self-motivated travel concern meetings – in the flesh, in real time and space – with art that includes murals, sculptures and glacier waters, and with artists through interviews and studio visits. For a book whose title is a riff on Nancy Mitford’s touching novel, The Pursuit of Love, it is also a subtle paean to the enormous variety of objects, buildings and paintings that we deem art, as well as its history and practitioners.The reader is of course at a remove and in a Read more ...
Stephanie Sy-Quia
You will doubtless have seen the protestors who dress as Gilean handmaids to protest anti-abortion legislation from Texas to Missouri. They model their costumes on those of the television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale: tight white bonnets and red smocks. They appear at courthouses and state capitols as a warning from the near-future or a fiction which feels ever more like the present – and the truth. Thirty-five years and much hype later, Atwood has given us a sequel, The Testaments. “Dear Readers,” she wrote recently on social media, “Everything you’ve ever asked me Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Serious historians don’t much care for counter-factual speculations. Readers, however, often enjoy them. So here’s mine. In 1780, the seemingly invincible forces of the East India Company had suffered a crushing defeat at Pollilur, west of Madras. It was inflicted by the well-drilled Mysore armies of Haidar Ali and his legendary warrior son, Tipu Sultan. Backed by French arms and expertise, the Mysore forces had allied with the rulers of Bengal and Avadh (roughly, today’s Uttar Pradesh) to resist the merchants-turned-conquerors from London. English power and influence in India, until then Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Albertopolis! The Royal Albert Hall, the Albert Memorial and countless Albert Squares, Roads and Streets all commemorate Britain’s uncrowned king. In this mesmerising biography, novelist and historian A. N. Wilson’s admiration and affection for Prince Albert – who spent 22 years as Victoria’s husband – make for an irresistible and informative read.The pace is akin to a novel – brisk and confident – and builds Wilson’s substantial volume on Victoria (2014). Wilson is sometimes criticised for his remarkable ability to popularise the complex. But he has examined a vast array of original sources Read more ...
Jessica Payn
Reality follows dreams in José Eduardo Agualusa’s latest experiment in quixotic political fable. The book opens with journalist Daniel Benchimol waking at the Rainbow Hotel in Angola’s capital, Luanda: “I saw long black birds fly past. I’d dreamed about them. It was as though they had leaped from my dream up into the sky, a damp piece of dark-blue tissue paper, with bitter mould growing in the corners.” The birds seem to have escaped the innards of his dreamworld; they stain the sky with an uneasy, oneiric presence. That, or perhaps these birds – seen but already dreamed – occupy a zone of Read more ...