Reviews
Landed, By Tim Pears
Cracks show in family portrait
Inside Reviews
61 Hours, By Lee Child
Sunday, 21 March 2010
The problems mount for Lee Childs' daring hero as he takes on a drug-dealing Mexican mid-blizzard
Brooklyn, By Colm Tóibín (Rated 4/ 5 )
Sunday, 21 March 2010
When Colm Tóibí*won the Costa Book Award for this novel, he very graciously paid tribute to a fellow nominee, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, perhaps wanting to acknowledge that hers was the better work. Tóibín's graciousness and honesty also pervade this carefully written, deliberately old-fashioned novel about a 1950s Irish émigré, Eilis Lacey, who finds herself in post-war Brooklyn at the urging of her mother and sister, who stay behind in Wexford.
Green Zone, By Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Rated 4/ 5 )
Sunday, 21 March 2010
This is one of the most depressing books I have read in the past 12 months and, yes, that is a recommendation. Originally titled Imperial Life in the Emerald City and re-christened for the recent Paul Greengrass film adaptation, it describes the breathtaking, heartbreaking scale of the ineptitude of the Americans placed in charge and housed in the fortified "Green Zone" in Baghdad just after Saddam had been toppled.
All My Shows Are Great: The Life of Lew Grade, By Lewis Chester
Sunday, 21 March 2010
A new biography of Lew Grade is a tender portrait of a much-loved man, and the epitaph he deserves
Where the God of Love Hangs Out, By Amy Bloom
Sunday, 21 March 2010
Cupid has to be patient in this understated collection
Life According to Lubka, By Laurie Graham (Rated 2/ 5 )
Sunday, 21 March 2010
I'm slightly uncomfortable with a novel that depends for much of its humour on the linguistic faux pas of those who don't speak English well. The fact that this humour is relayed through the faulty personality of the control-freakish music PR consultant Beryl "Buzz" Wexler, whose own command of English is limited to swear words and sarcastic comments, doesn't really let it off the hook.
Courage and Consequence, By Karl Rove
Sunday, 21 March 2010
Dubya's top aide refutes his rep for dirty tricks
Trespass, By Rose Tremain
Sunday, 21 March 2010
A London antiques dealer moves to rural France in search of salvation, only to walk into a troubled idyll
Wolf Hall, By Hilary Mantel (Rated 5/ 5 )
Sunday, 21 March 2010
Wolf Hall is not where Hilary Mantel's hero, Thomas Cromwell, lives. It's the seat of Jane Seymour's family, and Seymour will prove, in time, and hopefully in the sequel to this brilliant novel, to be Cromwell's undoing, for she will die giving birth to Henry VIII's son. Cromwell will then engage in his biggest, and fatal, mistake: manipulating his king into marrying Anne of Cleves.
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