More from Books

Saturday

Allan Massie

Open to the world?

One may make a distinction between two types of novel: the self-enclosed and the open. The distinction is not absolute. Such things never are. Genre fiction may merge with what is called the literary novel, for instance. Still the categories I have in mind are useful, or at least interesting. By the self-enclosed novel, I mean one which makes no reference — or almost no reference — to anything beyond itself. It belongs to its age of course, but it does not appear to be set in time. Time naturally passes, as it must in a narrative, but there is no suggestion that events in the world of fact beyond the novel might impinge on its characters, influence their behaviour, or affect the course of their lives. The doors of the novel are closed against the winds of the world.

Simon Baker

A boy’s own world

The pilcrow is a typographical symbol which looks like this: ¶. It was once used in writing (often of the philosophical or religious kind) to indicate a new line of discussion, before the habit of physically separating work into paragraphs changed its status to that of the exotic and learned yet largely useless. It is an apt nickname for John Cromer, the narrator of this novel, who grows up in the 1950s and early 1960s as a bright yet disabled boy: like a human incarnation of the pilcrow, John has intellectual pedigree but society gives him no outlet for it. As a child John is afflicted with Still’s Disease, a form of arthritis.

Archie Bland

A choice of first novels | 19 April 2008

Oliver Tate, the hero of Submarine (Hamish Hamilton, £16.99), is a monologophobic parthenologist. Roughly translated, this means he is interested in finding new words to describe what it’s like being a virginal 14-year-old in Swansea. So is Joe Dunthorne, whose first novel this is, and both he and Oliver are extremely good at what they set out to do. Dunthorne’s success is rooted in his star’s: Oliver is surely the most charming adolescent borderline sociopath since Martin Amis lit up The Rachel Papers with Charles Highway. This is the sort of teenager whose determination to help others overcome their distressing limitations is matched only by his blindness to how unwelcome such ministrations are.

Wednesday

Patrick Marnham

A radical, pantheistic nationalist

In 1932 a young English art historian recently returned from his travels sent an enthusiastic article to The Spectator about a series of brand new murals he had seen in the courtyards of the Ministry of Education in Mexico City: All these paintings [he wrote] are conscious expositions of Communism. The ultimate object … is always propaganda … to expound the lesson of Communism, just as that of the mediaeval artists was to expound the lesson of Christianity … If mediaeval art was the Bible of the Illiterate, these frescoes are the Kapital of the Illiterate. The young historian’s name was Anthony Blunt and the Mexican artist who had so impressed him was Diego Rivera.

Clare Asquith

The dying of the light

‘Tenebrae’ is the last office, the final prayer in the ritual day of the Benedictine monk. But there is a double finality to the Tenebrae evoked at the beginning of this book. This is the great cathedral church of Durham, and the date is 31 December 1539. ‘A few hours earlier, the Prior of Durham and his monks had surrendered their monastery to King Henry VIII, just as so many had done before them by then’. These monks are about to disperse, the church’s treasures will be appropriated and the ancient tombs of St Cuthbert and St Bede will be broken up after hundreds of years of continuous tradition.

Andrew Taylor

House of horrors

On the morning of Saturday 30 June 1860, the mutilated body of three-year Savill Kent was discovered in an outside privy at Road House, Wiltshire. The circumstances suggested that the murderer was almost certainly a member of the boy’s family or one of their servants. The case became something of a national obsession because of the age of the victim, the violence with which he had been attacked and the apparently secure and comfortable setting of the crime. The master of the house was Samuel Kent, a government sub-inspector of factories. Also present on the night of the murder were his second wife (formerly the governess), four children by his first marriage and three by his second, as well as the three live-in servants.

Lloyd Evans

Best of British?

Mike Leigh. Ground-breaking maverick or pretentious miseryguts? To ask the man himself isn’t perhaps the best way to secure an impartial verdict, but the personality that emerges in this series of interviews (composed with superb fluency by Amy Raphael) is an articulate, engaging, generous, highly original and occasionally peppery creative spirit. No British film-maker since Hitchcock has had Leigh’s array of talent. He can act, write, design and direct and he could easily have become one of the industry’s most bankable players had he not doggedly pursued his peculiar working method. He doesn’t use a script. Each film is built up through months of painstaking research and improvisation which he likens to the creation of ‘cartoons in the Raphael sense’.

Nicolas Barker

Firing the youthful imagination

I must first declare an interest, now almost subliminal, in the subject of this vast, comprehensive, polymorphous and wholly captivating book. I was six when the war broke out and 12 when it ended. I read a lot of the books described new, as well as many more that were older. I remember the Magnet, best of comics, closed when the Amalgamated Press ran short of paper; we had to make do with the Dandy and Beano, published by D. C. Thomson of Dundee. George Orwell was less sorry. In ‘Boys’ Weeklies’, published in Horizon in March 1940, he asserted that comics preserved the ruling class attitudes of 1910. ‘The stories in the Magnet are signed “Frank Richards”, but a series lasting 30 years could hardly be the work of the same person every week.

Saturday

Alexander Chancellor

Out of puff

The third volume of Simon Gray’s incomparable ‘smoking diaries’ opens with a bold statement of intent to drop the habit that has sustained and comforted him for more than six decades. The third volume of Simon Gray’s incomparable ‘smoking diaries’ opens with a bold statement of intent to drop the habit that has sustained and comforted him for more than six decades. ‘This diary is going to be about my attempt to give up smoking,’ he writes on page 1: It is also going to be my main help in giving up smoking.

Michael Beloff

That sweet city

What do they know of Oxford who only Oxford know? Justin Cartwright, a raw colonial from South Africa, arrived as a prospective law student at Trinity in the mid- Sixties. Now, a prize-winning novelist, he has contributed to a series ‘The Writer and the City’ and succumbed for a second time to charms which he found irresistible on first and fresh acquaintance. What do they know of Oxford who only Oxford know? Justin Cartwright, a raw colonial from South Africa, arrived as a prospective law student at Trinity in the mid- Sixties. Now, a prize-winning novelist, he has contributed to a series ‘The Writer and the City’ and succumbed for a second time to charms which he found irresistible on first and fresh acquaintance. He makes his apologies at the outset.

Molly Guinness

Too much remembrance of things past

Remember Me . . . is the story of a ten-year love affair, which begins in the early 1960s when Joe, an undergraduate polymath from the north, persuades Natasha, French, artistic, mysterious and slightly older than him, to trust him and finally to fall in love with him. Melvyn Bragg ensures that we see their life together at every stage along the way, and from every point of view. The consequence is that the novel details not only the many nuances that affect the relationship, but the excitement of young professional success at the BBC, of gaining a circle of trusted friends and of learning to write novels. Nearly all the subsidiary characters have well-defined personalities, and this is achieved by courageously extensive deployment of dialogue, all of which is convincing.

Douglas Hurd

Several careers open to talent

There are two ways of writing a successful book about oneself. The first is to be so successful in life that you command attention regardless of your prose style. The second, adopted by Ferdinand Mount, is to place the author in a self-deprecating way at the centre of a whirling mass of colourful and entertaining characters who dance in and out of his life. In this book Mount remains, by his own account, shy, abrupt, rather lazy, an iceberg in his dealings with women. Of course this negative self-portrait does not convince — there must be something else behind. Where have we met before this particular technique? Of course, in the narrator of A Dance to the Music of Time. It comes as no surprise to find that Anthony Powell was our author’s uncle.

Simon Baker

The magic lingers on

At the beginning of Salman Rushdie’s new novel a charismatic Florentine rogue arrives at the Mughal court and claims to have a story which he must tell to the Emperor, Akbar the Great, who, he insists, is his nephew. At the beginning of Salman Rushdie’s new novel a charismatic Florentine rogue arrives at the Mughal court and claims to have a story which he must tell to the Emperor, Akbar the Great, who, he insists, is his nephew. The claim of kinship seems implausible, but Akbar’s older relatives admit that there is a family secret involving a pale-skinned, mythically beautiful princess named Qara Köz, who was born 100 years earlier and was given away in exchange for peace.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

The solitary New York Jew

In a recent review of They Knew They Were Right, Jacob Heilbrunn’s book about the neo-conservatives, Mark Lilla began by asking: How many of you are sick to death of hearing about City College in the 1930s, Alcove One and Alcove Two, the prima donnas at Partisan Review, who stopped speaking to whom at which cocktail party . In a recent review of They Knew They Were Right, Jacob Heilbrunn’s book about the neo-conservatives, Mark Lilla began by asking: How many of you are sick to death of hearing about City College in the 1930s, Alcove One and Alcove Two, the prima donnas at Partisan Review, who stopped speaking to whom at which cocktail party . . . and a good deal more besides?

Graham Stewart

No need to panic — probably

When there is so much data suggesting the world’s climate is heating up, some may find it presumptuous of Nigel Lawson, who is not a scientist and has undertaken no original research, to hope to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. Would we take seriously an appraisal of his time as Chancellor of Exchequer written by someone whose only expertise was in oceanography? When there is so much data suggesting the world’s climate is heating up, some may find it presumptuous of Nigel Lawson, who is not a scientist and has undertaken no original research, to hope to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. Would we take seriously an appraisal of his time as Chancellor of Exchequer written by someone whose only expertise was in oceanography?

Tim Congdon

A load of hot air

Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the New York based Earth Institute, has established a formidable reputation as someone who thinks hard, and worries even harder, about the future of the planet. His latest book, Common Wealth, like its predecessor, The End of Poverty, reviews the major issues of international economic development in the early 21st century. But Common Wealth tries to go further than The End of Poverty, and raises the argument to a higher level of moral concern and practical difficulty. The defeat of poverty would be challenging in the best of circumstances, but global conditions in the early 21st century will be particularly hostile. Sachs identifies a conjunction of new problems, most of them arising from mankind’s pressure on the earth’s limited resources.

Dean Godson

Paying the price of peace

Jonathan Powell was the most durable of Tony Blair’s inner circle — and, in the affairs of Northern Ireland, much the most influential. Jonathan Powell was the most durable of Tony Blair’s inner circle — and, in the affairs of Northern Ireland, much the most influential. He remained in post long after the other Blairites de la première heure such as Alastair Campbell, Anji Hunter and Peter Mandelson had departed the scene. The most important career civil servants, such as Sir John Holmes and Sir David Manning, did their stints and rotated out. Powell thus became ‘last man standing’ and was a key player in the triumphant denouement of May 2007, as Martin McGuinness finally lay down with Ian Paisley.

Tuesday

Nicholas Haslam

Salt of the earth

As a young girl in Athens, Maria Callas would watch the films of the extraordinary Hollywood actress Deanna Durbin, and, entranced by that child-star’s utterly perfect voice, vowed to become an opera singer. A couple of decades later la diva divina went backstage at a New York theatre to congratulate another former child star with an equally perfect voice on her performance in her major Broadway triumph. The triumph was My Fair Lady, and the star was Julie Andrews. As a young girl in Athens, Maria Callas would watch the films of the extraordinary Hollywood actress Deanna Durbin, and, entranced by that child-star’s utterly perfect voice, vowed to become an opera singer.

Edward Norman

An assault upon relativism

The materialist humanists are winning — or have, perhaps, already won — the battle for possession of the moral conscience of the modern western world. The issues involved should have been brought into focus by public debate over the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill, but in reality all the debate has done is to demonstrate how little understanding there is, how insensitive the modern world has become to attitudes to human life that posit the existence of external standards of judgment or of non-material values. The materialist humanists are winning — or have, perhaps, already won — the battle for possession of the moral conscience of the modern western world.

Andrew Barrow

Blood will out

This brilliantly murky novel describes a nightmarish ten days in the life of a famous, highly successful but deeply dysfunctional family. The action takes place in prisons, mental hospitals, nursing homes — and the House of Commons. Involved in this brutal tale are three tall, handsome, Old Etonian brothers — a Labour MP, a stinking rich criminal prosecutor and a rather wayward journalist — and their more downmarket adopted brother who’s become a Catholic priest and a diminutive sister called Portia, devoted to helping poor, uneducated Mexican peasants. The parents are out of the picture but very much in the story. The father, a lawyer raised to the peerage, has lately become a victim of Alzheimer’s.