Which Books Should You Be Buying This Week?
Your round-up of the weekend's newspaper book reviews May 27/28
It’s another bank holiday weekend, how many is that now in May – three? And it's an excuse for your round-up to arrive a little later than Sunday evening.
I am still knee-deep in my latest book deadline and spent yesterday, a gorgeous sunny day, inside reading Baroness Casey’s 300-page Review of the Met Police. However, my incentive to get my work done each day is the fact that I’ve been reading this brilliant book: THE BABY ON THE FIRE ESCAPE – CREATIVITY, MOTHERHOOD AND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM.
This book actually arrived in my pop-up bookshop back in December as a customer order. I hadn’t heard of it until then, but when it did arrive, it was slightly damaged so I had to order another from the wholesaler, and me being a disorganised (read here: creative) type, I didn’t get round to sending it back – and I’m pleased I didn’t because it’s brilliant.
THE BABY ON THE FIRE ESCAPE takes a closer look at how women, and in this case mothers, manage to combine their job, their art, their creative practice, with raising children – those who managed it successfully, and those who have always thought to have not managed to create a perfect balance of the two. Some of the writers and artists include Alice Neel (the title is because the painter really did forget that she’d left her baby out on the fire escape once when she was busy working), Susan Sontag, Audre Lorde, Doris Lessing, and one of my favourites, Elizabeth Smart. If you thought I loved last week’s recommendation, A LIFE OF ONE’S OWN, that is nothing compared to this book. The cover image – a rather haunting one – is a portrait by Alice Neel of her own daughter-in-law holding her baby.
You can buy THE BABY ON THE FIRE ESCAPE here.
Anyway, enough about my reading, let’s turn to which books the papers were talking about this weekend.
First up, do we have any fans of Succession among us? I have tried to get into it – I think I got four episodes in – but have not managed to get as hooked as many others, but those who are fans might be interested to know that Faber have released the books of the scripts.
SUCCESSION – THE COMPLETE SCRIPTS are not for the faint of heart, coming in at 2,000 pages a pop, they are definitely for fans, but if you are at a loss for a Father’s Day present, maybe these are just the ticket. The Times reviews them in their Saturday Review.
‘To solemn devotees, Succession is art, its creator, Jesse Armstrong, is the heir to Shakespeare and the only appropriate response to these facts is to discuss the show in the laboured tone of an undergraduate dissertation.’
James Marriott, reviewing, did however notice many – many – penis jokes, questioning whether they are Faber-worthy, and it is something which had been previously noted before by The New Yorker: ‘In the world of Succession, pee is a symbol of power, and one can track the waning or surging of a character’s authority by keeping a close eye on the state of his urethra.’ Perhaps this makes sense to fans.
Anyway, an original gift for lovers of the hit TV series, I’ve just put Season One online for now, but if you were after more then just drop me a CUSTOM ORDER here. Otherwise, you can buy SUCCESSION – SEASON ONE: THE COMPLETE SCRIPTS here.
I’ve seen lots of rave reviews for Amanda Craig’s new novel THE THREE GRACES which sounds like it could offer ideas and inspiration to Mike White and the next season of HBO’s The White Lotus with its own star cast featuring a three retirees, a Russian oligarch on the run from Putin, a gaggle of London financiers, and an insta-perfect wedding of the grandson of one of the protagonists.
‘Age shall not wither us, but sometimes it feels a close-run thing, particularly if your joints are grinding so painfully that even the keys of your beloved piano represent torture; or if your house is suddenly over-run with an insouciantly carefree younger generation; or if wildly misplaced loyalty means that you are tethered to your hateful but dramatically entitled husband. Such are the terms and conditions that life has dictated to, respectively, Marta, Ruth and Diana, three friends whose Tuscan retirements are distinctly more constrained and convoluted that any of them would wish,’ writes Alex Clark reviewing in The Observer’s New Review this weekend.
With a mix like that of cast members and setting, what follows is a comedy of errors, the reader will have met the characters before in Craig’s previous novels, though Clark insists that it’s not necessary to enjoy this particular novel. And enjoy it you will, according to Clark.
‘Everyone at this carnival wears a mask, and each colludes in varying degrees in maintaining the fantasy… Craig’s continuing interest in exposing the fault lines of class, wealth and the inequality of opportunity is striking. Here, she examines the specifics of racial discrimination, rural poverty, marital abuse and the depredations of age and infirmity… as she capably demonstrates, however, surface reality can only hold for so long.’
This sounds intriguing. You can buy THE THREE GRACES here.
The Saturday Review in The Times had a great feature on ten of the best essay collections, featured among them was Joan Didion, one of my favourite essayists, and LET ME TELL YOU WHAT I MEAN, published after her death is currently on The Book Room’s virtual shelves. The Times named THE WHITE ALBUM, which I loved, as one of its ten best. Here’s what John Self had to say about it:
‘Joan Didion was a super-hip, ultra-cool chronicler of 1960s and 1970s California and the leading female exponent of the New Journalism: stylish, countercultural and always bringing the author into the story. I challenge you to start reading the title essay (beginning: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live”) and not carry on through it’s chronicle of murder, drugs and the Doors (the “missionaries of apocalyptic sex”). Didion wrote just as effortlessly about writers, places and her life.’
You can buy THE WHITE ALBUM here.
The reason for this round-up of essay collections was, of course, the sad death of Martin Amis last week, and his 2001 collection THE WAR AGAINST CLICHE features top of the list, though sadly it is out of stock with the publisher, which is a shame seeing as it got a big plug in the The Times and I’m sure lots of people want to buy it now.
Instead I’ll have to feature another essayist who I love and whose collection FEEL FREE was featured in the same round up – Zadie Smith. Here’s what John Self had to say about it:
‘You don’t need to have read Zadie Smith’s novels to know that her essays are better; after all, the essays are so brilliant that the novels couldn’t possibly be as good. She is unpretentious, breezily welcoming us into a topic, then delivering what Amis called “a transfusion from above” on subjects we didn’t know we were interested in: Christian Marclay’s 24-hour video artwork The Clock, say, or Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings. Smith excels at communicating joy — take her piece on resisting, then coming to love, the music of Joni Mitchell — and, like Dyer, she even manages to make travel writing not boring.’
So that’s your lot for this week, a reminder that this Thursday and Friday I will be running the first writers retreat featuring HAGS author Victoria Smith (I believe there is one spot left for latecomers!) who put together a brilliant Writers Recommend for us the other week, and these are the books I shall be losing myself in for the next few days.
Enjoy what’s left of your bank holiday!
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