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Interrupted
Lives
Andrew Motion
Would
we value these writers to the extent we do if
not for that shadow over the page? What would they have written had
they lived longer? Does our culture, in fact, prefer them just the way
they are?
Michael Caines
Identity
Zygmunt Bauman
The
demise of social 'narrative' has not led to greater individual freedom,
but to unreflective conformism to what is considered to be human nature.
Dolan Cummings
Our
Last Great Illusion: A Radical Psychoanalytical Critique Of Therapy
Culture
Rob Weatherill
As
a practising psychoanalytic psychotherapist, Weatherill
gives central prominence in explaining therapy culture to the changing
nature of intimate family relations. To wit: the death of the Oedipus
complex.
Patrick Turner
Before
I Forget
by Andre Brink
Brink doesn't seem to realise it is embarrassing
when Chris mentions that he has detailed notes on all of his women,
or when he compares them to different wines. Brink is out of step with
his audience if imagines Chris is a character to be admired or to inspire
compassion.
Natasha Hulugalle
Man
Booker Prize 2004 (longlist, alphabetical by author)
Purple
Hibiscus
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Kambili must navigate her way through a complex
of confusing and contradictory symbols just as Nigeria itself searches
for unity amidst external imposition and internal unrest.
Emily Whitchurch
Maps
for Lost Lovers
by Nadeem Aslam
Aslam's vision is not a happy one, and his
painting of it takes much getting used to. The influence of Rushdie,
instructive metaphors threatening at times to drown the sense, is almost
overpowering, but both reader and author can settle down together after
a couple of chapters.
Matt Warman
Clear:
A Transparent Novel
by Nicola Barker
David Clements
The
Island Walkers
by John Bemrose
I generally hate novels about the working
class: the writers either have a very low opinion of our intelligence,
or they worship us as improbable saints.
Dave Hallsworth
Havoc,
in its Third Year
by Ronan Bennett
Natasha Hulugalle
Jonathan
Strange and Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
Annette
Mees
Always
the Sun
by Neil Cross
Surprisingly, it is Cross' valiant effort
to write decently about men doing - or failing to do - the right thing
that both touches most and disappoints most.
Shirley Dent
Bitter
Fruit
by Achmat Dangor
Chloë Peacock
Becoming
Strangers
by Louise Dean
Life sucks, and relationships grow tired
and have to be put up with. Those who have invariably lose what it is
they long for. Those who get what they long for are invariably disappointed
with the reality of it.
Miranda Curnew
A
Blade of Grass
by Lewis Desoto
It is hard to understand why Desoto insists
on setting up his characters with such shallow, oversimplified emotions.
It is as if he has never read any previous literature on the subject.
Natasha Hulugalle
The
Electric Michelangelo
by Sarah Hall
The balls of society aside, Hall can be relied
on to write beautifully, and some of her finest work lies in subtle,
unerring descriptions of passing moments or moods, screaming details
or silent visions.
Michael Caines
Cooking
with Fernet Branca
by James Hamilton-Paterson
Rune Gellein
The
Line of Beauty
by Alan Hollinghurst
Hollinghurst is frequently described as Jamesian,
but at the risk of offending latterday aesthetes, to be Jamesian in
today's social and political climate is a very different thing from
being Jamesian in Henry James'.
Dolan Cummings
Sixty
Lights
by Gail Jones
The characters slowly gain shape, and ultimately
existence, through a description of ordinary events and unremarkable
episodes, all painted two-dimensionally, to fit the boundaries of the
photographs they inhabit.
Ion Martea
Cloud
Atlas
by David Mitchell
Patrick Hayes
The
Unnumbered
by Sam North
The novel makes for a swift and refreshing
read despite North's fragmented, incomplete characters, his patronising
emphasis on the vulnerability of women and the at times irritating leitmotif
of the inability to shape one's future.
Maria Grasso
Snowleg
by Nicholas Shakespeare
Nicholas Shakespeare touches on a range of
themes that provide fertile ground for a story: identity crisis and
cultural dislocation, the tumultuous events of Germany's reunification,
and love across generational, geographical and political divides. Yet
the book fails to ever really surprise or provoke the reader.
Chris Wilkinson
Cherry
by Matt Thorne
Steve's story is implausible, but it's hard
to tell whether we're dealing with a sci-fi novel or a delusional narrator,
or both (or indeed whether our narrator is even reliably delusional).
Dolan Cummings
The
Master
by Colm Tóibín
William Chamberlain
I'll
Go to Bed at Noon
by Gerard Woodward
Woodward's great concern in this novel appears
to be the disintegration of the family unit in the modern age, and the
impact of materialistic values on the traditional way of life for the
English.
David Bowden
Other
fiction
The
War at Troy
by Lindsay Clarke
Clarke has resurrected the old tales of
Greek fantasy long loved by the public schools and the aristocracy,
echoing as they do their own background history of brutal subjection
of the peasant producers for a life of ease for themselves and their
retinue of soldiers and priests.
Dave Hallsworth
Vernon
God Little
by DBC Pierre
It is not at all certain that DBC Pierre
does stand apart from the character of Vernon. It is indeed possible
that the voice of the protagonist is little more than a marginally altered
version of the voice of the author. Maybe it's because DBC Pierre still
inhabits the mind of a young child. Regardless of this (and of speculation
about the author's limitations), as a novel Vernon God Little does stand
on its own, albeit wobbly, two feet.
Patrick Hayes
Sick
Notes
by Gwendoline Riley
Riley gives no impression of wanting to be
an obvious rule breaker, and neither is she a loser. Rather she has
the commitment of another expert stylist on alcohol-fuelled melancholy,
Jean Rhys.
Natasha Hulugalle
The
Memory Man
by Lisa Appignanesi
My
generation is overwhelmed by books such as The Memory Man. They allow
us to wallow in nostalgia and to describe everyone today, especially
the young people, as not a patch on those of our day, incapable of copying
our steadfastness and sheer guts.
Dave Hallsworth
Non
Fiction
Weary
Gargoyles
The
Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel, by James Wood, and
Contemporary British and Irish Fiction: an Introduction Through Interviews,
by Sharon Monteith, Jenny Newman and Pat Wheeler, eds
The hysterical realists may be gifted writers,
but they are not able to translate their understanding of the world
in a truly literary way, without debasing the form in the name of, for
example, macro-microeconomics.
Emilie Bickerton
Distant
mirrors or smoke and mirrors?
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II, by
John Dower, and Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States and
the Modern Historical Experience, by Gabriel Kolko
Inasmuch as Vietnam provides a framework
for the exploration of the modern historical experience - that is, a
social framework moulded by human agency - then perhaps Iraq provides
a framework for exploring the postmodern historical experience, whose
defining feature is the lack of intent consciously to shape human history.
Philip Cunliffe
On
Anxiety
by Renata
Salecl
Discuss anxiety in any context and the urge
to indulge in some self-analysis is irresistible. By Chapter Four I
had guiltily diagnosed myself as a neurotic obsessive.
Natasha Hulugalle
Imagining
the Soul
by Rosalie Osmond
Like the contemporary self, the mystical
mind which believed its soul would last for eternity was not a rational
mind, yet that soul also reflected a progressive human trait which has
been lost in our contemporary times – the sense that humanity at
least shares some common interests.
Aidan Campbell
How
We Can Save the Planet
by Mayer Hillman
Under headings such as 'What should scare
you most' or 'these figures should shock you' the author berates us
for our energy-profligacy. Rising expectations, he makes the equation,
inevitably mean continued climate change. It's as simple as that.
David Clements
Histories,
Hopes and Memories
Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century, by Tzvetan
Todorov, and Interesting Times: a Twentieth Century Life, by
Eric Hobsbawm
It is only after
the ruination of the twentieth century's utopias that we find it so
difficult to invoke a time when politics and political solidarity would
be sufficiently important to disrupt human compassion.
Philip Cunliffe
Who's
in Charge? Responsibility for the Public Library Service
by Tim Coates
Unfortunately, what the report does not make
clear is what makes a collection of books important, and this is a salient
omission.
Ciaran Guilfoyle
Baudelaire
in Chains: a portrait of the artist as a drug addict
by Frank Hilton
Frank
Hilton has written a perfect example of the 'biography as expose' genre,
even if in choosing Baudelaire he has settled on a soft target.
Stephen Nash
Civil
Society
by Michael Edwards
Despite
alluding to the vacuity of public debate, Edwards fails to address the
problem head on.
David Clements
The
Abolition of Liberty
by Peter Hitchens
Had
your house broken into? Been hustled by some cheeky teenagers? Been
harassed by a new law that has made your job twice as hard? Tried to
get the police or the courts to come to your rescue and fallen on your
face?
Dave Hallsworth
Our
Final Century: will the human race survive the twenty-first century?
by Martin Rees
Rees
gets all nostalgic for the 4.5 billion years that preceded us when 'nothing
happened suddenly'. We are the unwelcome 'unprecedented spasm' gate-crashing
the biodiverse party with our agriculture and incessant radio-noise,
hurtling chunks of metal into orbit.
David Clements
Reclaiming
our Universities
by Steven Schwartz
This
pamphlet is basically an advert for New Labour's proposed changes to
funding higher education, in particular its case for universities charging
students fees for courses.
Ellie Lee
The
Modernization Imperative
by Bruce Charlton and Peter Andras
Charlton's
and Andras' thesis is itself a prescriptive method of analysis which
provides instructions not on whether to 'modernise', but how.
Nathalie Rothschild
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