Category: Book reviews
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The old stories are the best
When a good author gets hold of a classic theme, like Antigone for example, and applies it to an important current topic like what happens to Muslim families when politicians are trading on hatred and fear, the result is likely to be a gripping read. That’s why although Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire is a story…
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What do you do when your country is complicit in such a crime? Here’s what…
First Gaza, now the West Bank. We’ve been out protesting for nearly a year, and the forces of the establishment are taking a toll on our activists — but here’s an idea that could change that: Any of us can, at any time get called up for jury service and right now, what you do…
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Different century, same result – nameless corpses
When it comes up in conversation – or worse, as it does all too often, in confrontation, it’s always difficult to explain the distinction between traditional, class-based left politics and the post-modernist, identity-based kind (often called ‘progressive’). Trying to do so can seem like a pedantic intervention, and often gets those who don’t know much…
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Is this the weirdest book review I’ve ever written?
First off, I’ll need to apologize to the friend who lent me the book. It is not as new as it was. I have wrestled with it, I have wept over it, there was even a stress-related incident with a strawberry jam sandwich. I am not normally like that with books but this was that…
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The Meaning of Everything
Dictionaries are supposed to be descriptive (ie, presenting examples and definitions of how words are being used out in the world) not prescriptive (ie, their job isn’t to tell you what the words ought to mean, or how they ought to be used). What they definitely should not be is proscriptive (ie, they can’t tell…
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A million birds, two books, one life
Imagine you’ve been swept up into a high-flying flock of birds – a flock as numerous as a gathering of every swirl of starlings ever seen on a winter’s night. Imagine flocks of every species spiralling into one; every colour, every aspect and temperament that birds can display flickering around you as you swoop and…
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Mysterious holes in history
“Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” – Voltaire There are gaps…
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Just Stop Obfusticating
Last time I saw Stonehenge I was in the modern world. Quite glad of the almost permanent slowing of through-traffic, which infuriates the ‘get there yesterday’ people, and gives everyone else the chance to take a look at the stones in passing. We discussed it a bit, sitting on a picnic bench on the concrete…
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Talk of the Village
When when word got around that William Wood had put together a whole story collection inspired by snapshots of life in the village where he lived, some people were a bit worried. “Am I in it?” “You didn’t write about what happened to X, did you?” “Where do you get your ideas from?” — A…
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Can you keep a secret in a village?
Many years ago on holiday in Cumbria, author William Wood was enchanted by a village not unlike that portrayed in his new book. “Imagine what it would be like to live here,” he said to Anna, his wife. Neither ever dreamed this dream would come true. William was brought up in the South East and…
Kay Green 