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Book Reviews

• On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin 1986-2012 – review May 19, 2012
  The powerful reportage of a friend and rival is greater than the sum of its partsTo read a great newspaper reporter's work in a collected volume is entirely different from the cumulative effect of the articles over time. One gets a sense – perhaps a false one – of coherence, or even teleological destination, though of course there is none. And to read t […]
• In the Making by GF Green – review May 19, 2012
  First published in the early 1950s, Green's story of developing adolescent sexuality remains a brave work of fictionSet partly in an upper-middle-class English home and partly in a boarding school, GF Green's novel describes the early youth and adolescence of Randal Thane. A coddled, sensitive child, Randal develops strong attachments – first to hi […]
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – review May 19, 2012
  This dark, disturbing story of a wife's sudden disappearance is a contender for thriller of the yearOliver and Barbara, the toxic married couple from The Wars of the Roses, have nothing on Nick and Amy Dunne, the co-narrators of Gillian Flynn's dazzlingly dark, searingly intelligent new thriller. The novel opens as Nick – "I used to be a write […]
• Death of Kings by Bernard Cornwell – review May 19, 2012
  The sixth of Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series taps into a particular kind of male fantasyThis book, the sixth in Bernard Cornwell's bestselling Saxon Stories series, is set during and immediately after the death of King Alfred the Great as the Saxons and the Danes prepare to slug it out for power and the chance to shape what will become England. It […]
• Little Dogs – review May 19, 2012
  Patti Pavilion, SwanseaThere's a lovely reading on YouTube of Dylan Thomas's short story Just Like Little Dogs. The text unfurls on the screen as the voice of – I think – Anthony Hopkins speaks the words. If you haven't come across it yet, it's worth Googling. But although Frantic Assembly and National Theatre Wales have taken Thomas […]
• The Man Within My Head: Graham Greene, My Father and Me by Pico Iyer – review May 19, 2012
  Pico Iyer's meditation on the great influences of his life is a book that deserves to be lovedThe last acknowledgement at the end of Pico Iyer's 10th book is to the man within his head, "to the author who, almost in spite of himself, taught me and so many others how to move around the world and even how to hazard trust". This "author […]
• Tom Phillips and A Humument: how a novel became an oracle May 19, 2012
  New print and digital editions of the painter Tom Phillips's extraordinary work mark the artist's 75th birthdayThursday marks the 75th birthday of the artist Tom Phillips and much celebration is in order. He is best known for his ongoing project A Humument, new editions of which, in print and digital, coincide with this anniversary.A Humument is an […]
• Just Send Me Word by Orlando Figes – review May 19, 2012
  Drawing on a cache of smuggled love letters, Orlando Figes movingly charts a romance that blossomed in the unlikliest circumstances"Death solves all problems," declared Joseph Stalin, adding with his customary brutality: "No man, no problem." Anyone found guilty of threatening the Soviet state by his deeds or even thoughts would be elimin […]
• Taking the Waters by Caitlin Davies – review May 19, 2012
  The illustrated story of Hampstead Heath's three public bathing ponds is a colourful, if rather niche, social historyIf Hampstead Heath were in, say, Doncaster, rather than north London, would anyone publish a 176-page glossy, all-colour coffee-table book on the history of its swimming pools and ponds? Hmm. Well, in all likelihood, probably not. But the […]
• The Buddhas of Bamiyan by Llewelyn Morgan – review May 18, 2012
  The story of two Afghan sculptures, destroyed after a millennium and a halfIn 2001, in a violent attempt to advance the cause of Islamic fundamentalism, a clutch of men empowered by the Taliban brought down a titanic pair of structures that loomed over their skyline. No lives were lost. The few people living near the Buddhas of Bamiyan, in central Afghanista […]
• Thomas Becket, Warrior, Priest, Rebel, Victim by John Guy - review May 18, 2012
  The murder in the cathedral revisitedBorn within earshot of Bow bells, and venerated for centuries as the "light of London", Thomas Becket was the most celebrated medieval Englishman (if the French-speaking son of an immigrant Norman businessman can be described straightforwardly as "English"). His brutal murder – that of an archbishop in […]
• Itch: The Explosive Adventures of an Element Hunter by Simon Mayo – review May 18, 2012
  A mad scientist, a radioactive element … Simon Mayo's romp includes scientific knowhow and an amiable heroYou'd have to work quite hard not to like Itchingham Lofte. He's an old-fashioned 14-year-old, ordinary but obsessive. He collects elements the way 14-year-olds once collected football memorabilia or stamps. "There was, he thought, no […]
• The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan – review May 18, 2012
  A gritty debut novel set in a society without safety nets"Eric's … on the lamest power trip in the world – the decider of how long it takes for me to get a tampon," says Anais, a 15-year-old stuck in a care home, as she waits for a social worker to comply with her urgent request. What Fagan depicts in her debut novel, The Panopticon, is a soci […]
• Sue Arnold's audiobook choice - reviews May 18, 2012
  The Ration Book Olympics by Clare Balding, John Goodbody's History of the Olympics and Start the Car by David LloydThe Ration Book Olympics presented by Clare Balding (56mins, Audio Go, £9.25)Had they known in 2005 that the London Olympics closing ceremony alone was going to cost £90m, would Seb and his entourage have been quite so jubilant? Maybe someo […]
• Once You Break a Knuckle by DW Wilson – review May 18, 2012
  This is a masterful collection of short storiesWhenever a new short-story writer emerges, the custom is to make comparison with a giant of the form: for male writers, Andre Dubus, early Hemingway and, of course, Raymond Carver are the usual suspects, but a close reading of this first collection by DW Wilson, whose story "The Dead Roads" won the 201 […]