Book Reviews.
Martha Gellhorn: A life by Caroline Moorehead.
Martha Gellhorn, who died in 1998 aged eighty-nine, made it her business to speak on behalf of victims of war, poverty and callous governments. There was no shortage of such people in a life which spanned the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War, two world wars, and the conflict in Vietnam which made her feel ashamed to be American and resulted in her permanent exile in Britain.
More Please by Barry Humphries
Barry Humphries’s assault on Australian suburban mores began in Melbourne in the 1950s, an era when the possession of a pair of suede shoes signified sexual ambiguity and the Galleon Coffee Lounge was “continental”. He would kick, abuse and smash the glasses of a helpless blind man (a friend in disguise) on a busy train, and then leap off while the friend murmured endlessly, “Forgive him”. It is not exactly a surprise, then, for Humphries to admit, “I had discovered that there was a special pleasure to be had in shocking people.”
A Sense of the World by Jason Roberts
Of the five senses, our sight is the one we most value and the one it is hardest to imagine doing without. So the story of James Holman who was born in 1786, went blind at the age of twenty-five and, undaunted, studied literature and medicine at Edinburgh University and became an inveterate traveller is immediately intriguing. Holman promptly gained notoriety as the “Blind Traveller” and the first of his seven volumes of travelogue were well received, but later he and his work were scorned. He must be quietly exulting in the firmament that, thanks to Jason Roberts, his day has come.
Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin
Colm Toibin's last novel, The Master (2005), was extraordinary. Literary critics may have blenched at Toibin's imaginative recreation of Henry James's life ("what chutzpah", wrote Hermione Lee in The Guardian) and taken issue with certain depictions of the Master, but they admired the writing; it was an "extensive, misty and intricate work", according to John Updike in The New Yorker.
Love by Toni Morrison
The committee that awarded Toni Morrison the 1993 Nobel Prize in literature described her voice as a "combination of visionary force and poetic import". This holds true for her eighth novel, Love, in which she brings her vision to bear less on that emotion's joys than on its embittered twin, hate. As in her earlier fiction, Morrison relies on several narrators; here, again, are the motifs of ghosts and the haunting power of the past.
Runaway by Alice Munro
Annie Proulx and Alice Munro are two septuagenarian writers, both interested in, and now indelibly associated with, the small-town life of their home states, but in style about as alike as chalk and cheese. One thing they do share is the desire, as Munro once put it, for the reader "to feel something is astonishing - not the 'what happens' but the way everything happens".
There is no me without you by Melissa Fay Greene
The pram IN the hallway has clearly not impeded Melissa Fay Greene one iota. With three noted books of reportage to her credit, she is a journalist who writes for The Washington Post and The New Yorker, among others. She is also the mother of seven children, two of them from Ethiopia.
The Moment You Were Gone by Nicki Gerrard
This is the third novel from Nicci Gerrard, who doubles as Nicci French, co-author, with her husband, Sean French, of a successful series of crime novels. I have admired her ever since she published a long article in The Observer in 1996 detailing a visit to her sister, who had been living in Angola for years. It was unforgettable for its level-headed intimacy and authoritative reportage: by the end, one simply felt wiser about the world.
The Dressmaker’s Daughter by Kate Llewellyn
In a former autobiographical work - there are at least six - Kate Llewellyn noted that "my life is simply the paddock I plough when I write. I do it, because it is held in common with the lives of other women in this place and this time." Read the results of all that ploughing, as I did, rapidly, one after the other, and it's hard not to feel squeamish at being privy to these banal, often painfully frank details of a life. And yet, like a quality television soap (think The Sullivans), Llewellyn's poised series of memoirs are addictive.
The Household Guide to Dying by Debra Adelaide
Delia Bennet is dying. There can hardly be a more brief, yet urgent sentence. Compare it to "Delia Bennet is dead" and you can see how the two differ, the latter being flatter, final. Delia Bennet herself notes the active verb when discussing with her publisher the themes of The Household Guide To Dying, which will, perforce, be the last in the series she has written (following those on Home Maintenance, the Garden, Kitchen and Laundry). So, "The Palliative Care Room", "Wills And Wishes" and "Funeral Festivities" are to be included but not the afterlife, which is, as yet, out of her ken.
Essays.
Letter from Maputo
In Lourenço Marques, as the capital city of Mozambique was once called, the domestics were black; many of the clerks, bus drivers and mechanics were Portuguese; the British-Indians ran the small stores; and among the wealthy were a sizeable European elite. There was a British Club, where, just after Independence in 1975, armed soldiers interrupted a “shower” for a recently born baby and herded the women into a small anteroom overlooking the garden (one woman refused to leave her chocolate cake behind, in spite of the guns and bayonets).
Salt, snow, stars, winter
Nicola Walker is seduced by Lavinia Greenlaw's second volume of poetry - sensual, ethereal and hard-hitting. If you want to get ahead in this world, get a lawyer - not a book,' advised the writer Fran Lebowitz. Lavinia Greenlaw seems to have taken this advice to heart; she recently became poet-in-residence at Mishcon de Reya at a salary of £10,000 for an afternoon a week. It is good business for Mishcon too, as Greenlan is a fantastically sensible poet, unlikely to jeopardise its bold venture with embarrassing displays of irascibility, drunkenness, or absurd egomania.
“Our Woman in Sydney”
In 1914, the future of the Times Literary Supplement was in grave doubt as Lord Northcliffe, proprietor of Times Ltd, disliked its stalwart first editor, Bruce Richmond, and the kind of anti-populist reviews he favoured. On February 11, Lord Northcliffe’s manager, Reggie Nicholson, proposed that the TLS be “submerged in the paper” and its editor dispatched. Then, four days later, he had a change of heart and advised his boss to make the TLS a separate supplement costing a penny, the same price as The Times.
Heavenly Creatures
Emily Perkins tells Nicola Walker about her new book, a frank tale of modern love in New Zealand. New Zealand-born Emily Perkins can barely believe her luck. The director of Picador happened to be in New Zealand when her first published story appeared in an arts magazine in March 1994; it impressed him so much that he immediately contacted her. That story, 'Local Girl Goes Missing' is Perkins at her best: limpid prose that conveys the memories of a pensive young woman as she flips through the family photo album.