More sour remarks about books I tried and found wanting. Hugh Walpole, Portrait of a Man with Red Hair This 1925 novel pops up regularly in lists about the supernatural canon as a gem of twentieth-century Gothic horror. It is certainly horrifying, but it’s a novella stretched out painfully beyond the natural length of its … Continue reading I Have Doubts
Category: political / social commentary
Daughter of the Desert, by Georgina Howell
This biography of Gertrude Bell begins slowly, rockets up to high speed, but goes a bit flumph at the end. As the Guardian's review back in 2006 noted, Howell seems to regard Bell's thwarted love affair with a married man as the central moment of her subject's life, and is not interested enough in the … Continue reading Daughter of the Desert, by Georgina Howell
J D Beresford, A World of Women
I reviewed the new MIT press edition of J D Beresford's Goslings (US title: A World of Women) for Strange Horizons. It's good!
Judith Mackrell, Bloomsbury Ballerina
I lived outside the UK from 2001 to 2016, so I missed a lot of new books I would otherwise have gobbled up on their first publication. (There were good English bookshops where we lived, but I still missed things.) I only realised that this exceptional biography of Lydia Lopokova existed because I met a … Continue reading Judith Mackrell, Bloomsbury Ballerina
Read With Pleasure
I did enjoy reading these, but I haven’t got a whole blogpost’s worth to say about each of them. Please accept these brief paras in the spirit of strong recommendation. Una McCormack, The Greatest Story Ever Told I bought this from NewCon Press, one of a trilogy of themed novels about a populated Mars, with … Continue reading Read With Pleasure
New Year, new duds
It is downright depressing to find so many books from my TBR shelf turning out to be duds. The only upside is that I have contributed several to the charity shop, and I might have learned a bit more about how not to write. F Tennyson Jesse, The Lacquer Lady (1929) I’ve long had Jesse … Continue reading New Year, new duds
The Hot Gates, by William Golding
This is a collection of twenty essays, reviews and magazine columns written by the British novelist and Nobel laureate William Golding, from the early 1950s to the early 1960s. It's a time capsule, packed with riches, and one stand-out comic essay on the body-soul dislocation experienced when flying across the USA. (Bourbon is involved.) Much … Continue reading The Hot Gates, by William Golding
The Flying Duchess
Mary Russell is a complicated subject. She was a Victorian archdeacon's daughter, and married Lord Herbrand Russell, the second son of the 9th Duke of Bedford, in 1888 in India where he was an aide-de camp to the Viceroy. Her brother-in-law died a few years after he succeeded to the title, and so Mary, a … Continue reading The Flying Duchess
Hadley Freeman, House of Glass
I will read anything Hadley Freeman writes as a journalist, as she is witty, sensible, has a piercing eye for the unnoticed-but-telling observation, and is always entertaining. Her House of Glass is probably the best biography / memoir I've read all year so far. It's the story of Freeman's Jewish grandmother and her family, emigrating/escaping … Continue reading Hadley Freeman, House of Glass
Six of the Best
I've been busy, and haven't felt the oomph factor when reading books lately to hurl me into writing about them at length. But here are six good books I recommend, fresh entries from my reading diary. Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age For all you pagans out there, this is a compelling assemblage of the horrific … Continue reading Six of the Best
Kate Macdonald 