The Horse’s Mouth, the third and most celebrated volume of Joyce Cary’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Cary) First Trilogy, is one of the finest novels ever written about an artist. Its painter hero, the charming and larcenous Gulley Jimson, has an insatiable genius for creation and a no less remarkable appetite for destruction. Is he a great artist? A has-been? Or an […]
In The Heat of the Day, Elizabeth Bowen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bowen) brilliantly recreates the tense and dangerous atmosphere of London during the bombing raids of World War II. Many people have fled the city, and those who stayed behind find themselves thrown together in an odd intimacy born of crisis. Stella Rodney is one of those who chose
The Heat of the Day Read More »
This is arguably Graham Greene’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene and http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5180/the-art-of-fiction-no-3-graham-greene) masterpiece, although my personal favourite is The End of the Affair. In a poor, remote section of Southern Mexico, the paramilitary group, the Red Shirts, have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest is on
The Power and The Glory Read More »
In this breathtaking adventure story from Paul Theroux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Theroux), the paranoid and brilliant inventor Allie Fox takes his family to live in the Honduran jungle, determined to build a civilization better than the one they’ve left. Fleeing from an America he sees as mired in materialism and conformity, he hopes to rediscover a purer life. But
The Mosquito Coast Read More »
James Joyce by Richard Ellmann (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ellmann) was published in 1959 (a revised edition was released in 1982). It is widely accepted as a masterpiece of literary biography. Anthony Burgess (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Burgess) was so impressed with the biographer’s work that he claimed it to be ‘the greatest literary biography of the century’. The levels of research that went into
The summary of this 2008 novel from Sebastian Barry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Barry) is as follows. In the beginning, Dr. William Grene’s interest in an almost impossibly old woman is merely professional, tinged perhaps with a hint of curiosity. Roseanne McNulty, one hundred years old, was one of the most beautiful girls in County Sligo in her youth. She has
The Secret Scripture Read More »
Bernard Crick’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Crick) biography puts the many forces that shaped Orwell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell and http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000012316,00.html and http://georgeorwellnovels.com/biography-of-george-orwell/) into perspective. More than anything else Orwell feared the state. As an outgrowth of this fear, Orwell dissected propaganda and exposed the many ways in which language can be made a tool of tyranny. While he is known mainly for 1984 and Animal
George Orwell: A Life Read More »
A fine biography from 1952 of Stanley Baldwin (1867 – 1947 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Baldwin and http://www.biography.com/people/stanley-baldwin-9196751), the only British Prime Minister to serve under three monarchs (George V, Edward VIII and George VI). He was in office in new and difficult conditions: the onset of modern democratic politics, the rise of Labour, chronic economic depression, the General Strike, persistent newspaper
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is grey. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them
