Boys, Flesh, Christie, Hours, Trollope, Diana, Perfection, audiobooks

Lots of opinions about some of my recent reading

I appeared on

James Marriott

’s podcast

Cultural Capital

to talk about how to read and why.

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The Boys, Leo Robson

This is marketed as a “fresh and original debut” and is blurbed by several luminaries like Joyce Carol Oates. I found nothing original or interesting in it. As is often the case, I’d like to see the review Leo Robson would write of this book! It seems to be widely known among critics and writers that there is a lack of honesty in book reviewing. I don’t know if that is the case here, or if I am simply missing something many others appreciate, but I think this book is like Headshot:—it will get a lot more praise than it deserves because of who wrote it, maybe even prize nominations. This review tries to claim the novel as a version of French New Wave, which is not wrong as such, but is also quite generous.

Flesh, David Szalay

I read this in one sitting and now want to read all of his other books. So few novels capably display life as a worker. In Flesh, we see the protagonist rise through a career as a security guard at strip clubs to London property developer, all convincingly done. He goes from Hungary to London, from a young man taken advantage of to a middle-aged one making the dodgy decisions. And when can we say he is to blame? Few novels can present a protagonist who is non-agentic without becoming dull, but Flesh does exactly that. It is a quest in which the hero is pushed along, unsure if he wants to go or not. What starts as naïveté becomes helpless acceptance then cynicism then release. It is worth reading this alongside The Boys to see how flat, spare, minimal writing can be done well and badly. If only all the praise that is flowing to Robson were being directed to Szalay, a truly underrated writer!

Shibboleth, Thomas Peermohamed Lambert

This is the book everyone is talking about right now, and it has had many excellent reviews. I have read about half. It is funny, witty, irreverent, and a very English campus novel. I don’t see it quite as a modern Lucky Jim, as some have done, though the comparison is inevitable. One of the stronger debuts I have seen for a while. I will report back when I have read more.

For Amis Senior, by the way, I like The Anti-Death League, The Old Devils, The Green Man, The Biographer’s Moustache, and Memoirs. Stanley and the Women is funny in an unacceptable way, but also has something of the deep bore about Amis and if you find it readable once (which I did) I don’t expect the feeling will last.

Perfection, Vincenzo Latronico

Almost as boring as Orbital, which was insanely boring.

Agatha Christie, Laura Thompson

I read most of this on a flight and found it brisk, intelligent, and information dense in an entertaining way. This is not what you usually expect in a Christie biography! What I love most is that

laura thompson

(who writes a splendid Substack, by the way—she’s very good on Nancy Mitford) really knows the novels, so that everything is illuminated with unexpected and telling examples. Unlike those boring self-involved biographers who do this to “discover” their own preoccupations in the books, Thompson’s selections really do show you what the books are actually like. I was already a big Christie admirer but I left the plane feeling like there was even more to admire. If you want to know about Christie, but you don’t want to sold a some glamorous fluff or feminist re-interpretation or whatever, this is your book. Once my current busy patch dies down, I will be finishing this book with glee.

Rural Hours, Harriet Baker

Another excellent biography. I listened to the audiobook, read by Baker herself. The pace and timbre of her voice are well-suited to the subject matter, but I had to listen to it at a faster speed, as I simply cannot go that slowly; however, it still worked very well. Baker talks about the biographical importance of ordinary life and she creates a mosaic narrative out of daily incidents—, but she uses this as a way of illustrating bigger themes about the way her subjects are developing personally and professionally. When I first saw this book, I wondered why another book about Virginia Woolf was required (and unlike everyone else, I thought Square Haunting was mediocre). But it is extraordinary to discover that Woolf’s rural diary hasn’t actually received any attention before this book. So much is beneath the notice of the modern literati, too often more concerned with their own ideas than with the authors they purport to study! Despite winning a prize recently, this book remains under praised, and, at least among the people I talk to, under-read.

Dianaworld, Edward White

A skimming book, but full of fascinating trivia. Did you know that Diana wanted the princes to go to Eton? Or that, at the height of her fame, you could make good money as a Diana impersonator even if you didn’t look very much like Diana… The fact that she bit her fingernails was a news item in both 1981 and 1985. White argues that, far from being “normal”, Diana was determinedly aristocratic rather than Royal, which caused all the ructions. I think that is very true, but I didn’t feel the need to keep skimming after the first third.

Framley Parsonage, Trollope

Someone in my WhatsApp asked if Trollope was worth reading, and, since I was given a deck chair for Father’s Day, this immediately prompted me to read Framley Parsonage. What a delight! The great disappointment of Doctor Thorne is that Archdeacon Grantly and his wife don’t appear, but they do have a reasonable part to play in this book. Trollope is often discussed in the “is he a great author or a great entertainer” terms that allow pretension to presume to judgement. Whatever the merits of his literary quality, he shows very clearly what it really means for a system based on “feudal charms” to clash with the meritocracy of capitalism. I find his work delightful, but also instructive. I hope to write more about this novel. Start with The Warden if you don’t know Trollope. The Way We Live Now is a masterpiece for our times.

Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones

Stunningly good, one of those children’s books that is also written for adults, fully relevant to the culture wars of its day about divorce. The closest book to this that I know of is The Ballad of Peckham Rye, noting that they are quite different books in many ways. You will get more out of this if you know some T.S. Eliot, but you can do that afterwards if needed. I also read Deep Secret, The Merlin Conspiracy, and Black Maria—Deep Secret is easily the best of these and perhaps one of Wynne Jones’s best as well. I will continue to read through her other work. Drowned Ammet is also remarkably good.

Misc. audio books

Cultural Amnesia by Clive James now looks very clearly like what it should have appeared to be at the time: an attempt at serious criticism that constantly reverts to flamboyant judgement and newspaper-column humour.

Le Morte d’Arthur is the sort of book that I thrill to but which

James Marriott

told me in our recent podcast leaves him cold, so my praise may leave some of you cold, but I love the audio book narrated by Derek Jacobi. It is abridged, so it is nine hours rather than forty.

Gulliver’s Travels is one of the very best books in English, and Swift is the most intelligent of the great authors. The audio book narrated by David Hyde Pierce is splendid. I laughed uncontrollably at Charing Cross station.

Howl’s Moving Castle is one of my favourite fantasy novels and this audiobook captures the spirit of it very well, giving Howl a Welsh accent. I also enjoyed The Spellcoats narrated by Wynne Jones’s sister.