Satire

I was on a train when it happened. I was bent double with my head between my knees, gasping for air and unable to speak. The Surrey matriarch sitting opposite leant forward to ask me if she could help. I imagine she thought that I was choking, or perhaps suffering cardiac arrest. In fact, I was laughing. Laughing so hard I couldn’t stop. And the more I wanted to stop, the worse it got. It was painful. My lungs rasped and the muscles in my sides contracted of their own free will. I was no longer master of myself, so you might say that I was in ecstasy. It was certainly exhilarating. I regained composure and explained myself to this kind woman. She looked stern; her immaculate curls bristling slightly at my wildness.

Winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize, Anne Enright is on this week's Shelf Life. She tells us which book qualifies as the first satisfying satire on the Irish boom, gives us a long list of the parties in literature she would like to have attended and reveals which is the only book by Norman Mailer that wouldn't make her run for the hills. Her latest novel is The Forgotten Waltz and she will be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Sunday 19th August at 18:30. www.edbookfest.co.uk 1) What are you reading at the moment? Graham Greene, would you believe: A Burnt Out Case. Also A.M. Homes May We Be Forgiven, in proof, which promises to be wonderful.

Epigram 7 from The letting of humours blood in the head-vaine ‘Speak gentlemen, what shall we do to day? Drink some brave health upon the Dutch carouse? Or shall we to the Globe and see a play? Or visit Shoreditch for a bawdy house? Let’s call for cards or dice, and have a game. To sit thus idle is both sin and shame.’ This speaks Sir Revel , furnished out with fashion, From dish-crowned hat unto the shoe's square toe, That haunts a whore-house but for recreation, Plays but at dice to cony catch or so, Drinks drunk in kindness, for good fellowship, Or to a play goes but some purse to nip. Like tabloid exposés of celebrity sexual shenanigans, satire can tread a fine line between condemnation and titillation. Good writing can exploit that confusion.

The most remarkable thing about this book is that it should have been published at all. No one could have imagined in 1961 that Private Eye — a blotchy reproduction stapled together on what looked like yellow scrap paper — would still be going 50 years later, selling hundreds of thousand of copies every fortnight and apparently employing about 50 people. Adam MacQueen has not written a history of the paper but has compiled a biographical album of contributors, staff, stories and various dramas in its history. The author suggests that it could be read from cover to cover, but that would be hard work even for a satirical anorak. It is much better approached on a random basis, following the cross-references or just leafing through it.

There is chick lit, or witless, ill-written, juvenile popular fiction, and then there is superior chick lit, which is smart and amusing and written for grown ups. Both these novels fall into the latter category, both are second books by well-regarded journalists and both are worth taking into the garden or on the plane this summer. Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times stays in the office, where her first hilarious satire of corporate life and the pompous executive male, Martin Lukes: Who Moved My Blackberry? was located. This time, her target is the tragi-comedy of the office affair, and revolves around the ill-judged but irresistible romantic adventures of two women, Stella, the office star, and Bella, the office beauty.