Which Books Should You Be Buying This Week?

Your digest of the weekend's newspaper book reviews Oct 28/29

I write to you still only a third into the MADONNA: A REBEL LIFE book, yet I am enjoying every single one of it’s 800 pages. You probably know that Autumn is publication time for the celebrity memoir in the run-up to that desperate search for Christmas presents, so we start off with a couple more here.

First up, Richard and Liz Taylor. I’m pleased The Times published a review of this on Saturday because I wanted to squeeze Roger Lewis’ new book EROTIC VAGRANCY in last week’s digest as it had been mentioned in a few of the papers but I ran out of space.

All of the other reviews I read last weekend were very complimentary about this book which was 13 years in the research and writing for Lewis and he has, indeed, left no stone unturned. 

In his review, Andrew Billen appears from the off to be rather Team Burton. He delights in telling anecdotes about Liz as being hirsute (Burton apparently called her ‘monkey nipples’), he squeezes in a story about her having a boil on her bum, and the fact that Lewis laid Burton’s demise firmly at her door: ‘Lewis calls Burton’s involvement with Taylor the greatest disaster of his life.’

Yet scan down the review and we hear more about Burton himself: a cheat, a wife-beater, a possible paedophile, a man who locked his “retarded” daughter up in an institution at six (it’s thought she was actually autistic) was a monster to her mother and possibly a murderer of his own brother. 

But yes, Liz surely was the ‘disaster’ of his life. 

This pair filled column inches during their lives and as you can see Roger Lewis was not short of material for them in death either. This book runs to 645 pages. But one thing it promises to be, in typical Lewis style, is entertaining. 

‘Obtaining an aerial view of your subjects is hard when you are so happily entangled in the weeds,’ writes Billen. ‘When Lewis attempts to do so the effect resembles a guest demanding you step out of a party at which he has been the life and soul and, in a corridor, telling you with sudden and belligerent sincerity what he really thinks. We want to get back to the party. And what a party! Yes, 650 pages, but five times that many interpretations, assertions, vituperations, jokes, and nothing verbose or obvious. And very little repetition, considering. Does EROTIC VAGRANCY add up to more than the sum of its parts? Perhaps not, but how could it when the sum of its parts is so huge? Lewis’s magnum opus is a masterpiece in a genre of his own invention.’

You can buy EROTIC VAGRANCY here. 

Next up, a memoir that everyone is talking about, it’s THE WOMAN IN ME by Britney Spears. So many column inches have been filled by people writing about her, but now, finally, we hear from the woman herself.

‘What begins as a seemingly simple, straightforward recounting of Spears’s child stardom… hardens into a polemic of “blind rage” Rage at the music industry that constructed an image of eternal virginity… Rage at a public who refused to allow her to grow up… Rage at a media who obsessed over her body…’ writes Jane Mulkerrims reviewing in The Times.

‘“The music industry — really the whole world — is set up more for men,” [Spears] writes. And while not an overtly feminist manifesto, men do not come out of this story well. Spears notes early on the double standard in the media’s treatment of her and of Timberlake when he was her boyfriend — “I couldn’t help but notice that the questions he got asked by talk show hosts were different from the ones they asked me” — a double standard that only worsened after their breakup.’

The Times declared it their Book of the Week and I’m adding it to my ‘to be read’ pile.

You can buy THE WOMAN IN ME here.

Ooh, as an aside, you might want to know that you read this newsletter alongside literary royalty. Remember last week I included a review of Jilly Cooper’s TACKLE! Well, after I mailed it out to you, it reached all the way to the woman herself who absolutely loved the poem that Sarah Salway had penned about her and her assistant reached out to ask for Sarah’s address so Jilly could send her a card — which she did. 

If you missed the poem last week, you can find it here.

You are probably aware that Scorcese has a new movie out which has been declared a masterpiece, but did you realise it is based on a true story brought to the page by David Grann? KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON is the true story of how the indigenous Osage people were murdered in 1920s Oklahoma by American settlers hungry to get their hands on their oil. Plus ça change, eh?

 I remember buying this book six years ago when it was first published, and so I can’t wait to see the film, but Saturday’s Times insist you must read the book first for the best experience of the film:

‘Grann may have written a history, but it is in the form of a detective story and a deeply compelling one at that… His is no inherited oil-field that just happened to be sitting below the surface. There is a kick-in-the guts half-twist at the end of the book that gives the work its moral heft and reminds the American people of the great cost of their nationhood. It’s a twist that owes everything to Grann’s diligence and intelligence as a journalist.’

You can buy KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON here. 

And finally, I’ve seen various reviews for Judi Dench’s new book SHAKESPEARE: THE MAN WHO PAYS THE RENT and wanted to squeeze them in but it was this clip from her appearance on The Graham Norton Show that forced me to find space because she is such a national treasure. 

This book sees her in conversation with fellow actor Brendan O’Hea and according to the review in The Guardian’s Saturday magazine the informal nature and structure of the book which sees Dench and O’Hea chatting about everything from backstage anecdotes, tips on how to speak in iambic pentameter, musings on the inner lives of Shakespeare’s heroines and her own loves and losses (her late husband Michael Williams was an RSC actor) gives this book the feel ‘like you’re sitting at her kitchen table with her.’

‘There is no doubting her passion for the subject,’ writes Michael Simkins reviewing. ‘“If you need to understand jealousy, read Othello or The Winter’s Tale; if you’re in love listen to Romeo and Juliet,” [Dench] says; while during the pandemic she found herself thinking of Richard II’s line: “I wasted time and now doth time wastes me.” At 88 and with failing eyesight, she’s only too aware of her own mortality, but claims to worry more about being patronised than being infirm. Asked by a paramedic after a recent fall whether she had a carer, she wanted to reply, “I’ve just done eight fucking weeks at The Garrick…”’

Dame Judi Dench has entertained the world for decades, it stands to reason her book would be equally entertaining. 

You can by SHAKESPEARE: THE MAN WHO PAYS THE RENT here. 

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