Tag Archives: books
Book review: Freedom by Jonathen Franzen
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen Epic.Since I apparently live under a rock, I last heard the name Franzen when I read The Corrections. I didn’t realise that there were weird amounts of media buzz going on about his requesting that work … Continue reading
Book review: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain In an exuberant adventure ride down the Mississipi, Huck faces the big issues of integrity and loyalty and the instinct to listen to your own ‘good heart’ rather than the distorted values … Continue reading
Book review: Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy
Both Ways is the Only Way I Want it by Maile Meloy This wonderful title is a quote from a poem by A.R.Ammons, and is an apt description of the quandary encapsulated in each of these stories. Often enough the … Continue reading
Book review: The Bay of Noon by Shirley Hazzard
The Bay of Noon by Shirley Hazzard Shirley Hazzard has a most wonderful knack of precise, deft characterisation: the narrator describes her sister-in-law as “an emphatic little woman. When I first knew her she could look delicious even so, an … Continue reading
Book review:Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
Too Much Happiness: Stories by Alice Munro There should be a special category for Munro. She takes you into her house of fiction, opening doors onto pain and horror, onto hope and happiness (too much), onto searing truth and ravaging … Continue reading
Book review: The Vicar of Wakefield
The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale by Oliver Goldsmith The nice thing about novels written mid-eighteenth century is that they are so different, to each other as well as to what we have come to expect from the realistic novels … Continue reading
Book review: Causes of the English Revolution
Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642 by Lawrence Stone This is a historian’s history book. Part one is devoted to historiography; the first chapter gives a critical overview of revolution theory, looking at the hypotheses and defects of various paradigms, … Continue reading
Book review
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe Naturally I read a version of this story as a child – what sort of childhood do you suppose I had? But naturally it was abridged, a comic, and concentrated on those elements that have … Continue reading
Book review
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel A novel about the French Revolution, concentrating on the lives of Georges Danton, Maximilien Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins. “For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography. They break the rules and … Continue reading
Book review: A Passage to India
Naturally, any book written in 1924 is bound to offend a twenty-first century sensibility, steeped as we are in a consciousness of racial stereotyping. Just occasionally, it must be admitted, Dr Aziz is portrayed as childish and petulant, and phrases … Continue reading
A class act 