Reviews

Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, By Juliet Barker

How a cast of despicable characters and warring factions kept France on its knees post-Agincourt

Inside Reviews

False Dawn, By John Gray (Rated 5/ 5 )

Sunday, 8 November 2009

Events since False Dawn was first published in 1998 would seem to bear out John Gray's thesis that global capitalism leads not to universal prosperity but to chaos. In chapters on the US, Russia, China, Japan and developing countries, Gray shows again and again that laissez-faire capitalism is the problem, not the solution. On virtually every page there is some insight that makes you think: for instance, Gray points out that America's unemployment figures look far better than they are if you factor in the US prison population of more than a million.

Nation, By Terry Pratchett (Rated 2/ 5 )

Sunday, 8 November 2009

Nation, Terry Pratchett's latest novel for younger readers, starts promisingly: with the creation myth of an island people in the South Pacific – sorry, in Pratchett's alternative world, that's the South Pelagic Ocean. Then Mau, a boy of the Island people, returns from a solitary ordeal on a neighbouring island to find his whole nation wiped out by a tidal wave. He loses his faith in the Nation's gods – though they will keep jabbering to him in his head – and braces himself to deal with an influx of refugees from the tsunami, including Daphne, daughter of the heir to the British throne. The stage is set for a clash of cultures.

A Freewheelin' Time, By Suze Rotolo (Rated 2/ 5 )

Sunday, 8 November 2009

Suze Rotolo is the girl nestling up to Dylan on the album cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. She met him in 1961 when she was 17 and he was 21, and this book is a record of their time together in folky, smoky Greenwich Village.

The People's Train, By Thomas Keneally

Sunday, 8 November 2009

Thomas Keneally pierces the heart of the revolution

The Vagrants, By Yiyun Li (Rated 5/ 5 )

Sunday, 8 November 2009

Yiyun Li takes on the omniscient voice of a 19th-century realist novelist for this bleak story set in a provincial town in China, 1979. A people who had endured the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution might have expected a thaw after the death of Mao – but it was a long time coming.

Telling Tales, By Melissa Katsoulis (Rated 3/ 5 )

Sunday, 8 November 2009

Melissa Katsoulis's entertaining account of literary hoaxes from the ancient world to the present day covers all three main kinds of hoax: the "genuine" hoax, that is to say the hoax that was never intended to be discovered (the Hitler diaries, the Ossian poems); the mock hoax, where a writer adopts a persona to create a new literary voice, such as James Norman Hall's invention of the 10-year-old poet Fern Gravel; and, most deliciously of all, the entrapment hoax, perpetrated to make a fool of a specific target.

Winning At All Costs, by Paul Gogarty & Ian Williamson

Sunday, 8 November 2009

"I blame the parents" goes the clich�, and in their exploration of what psychological forces make great sporting heroes great, the authors – a journalist and a children's analyst – seem to agree. The core of their book is the proposition that a desire to please their mother and vanquish rivals for her affections, be it father, siblings or others, is what drives most sportsmen on; their sporting opponents are surrogate foes (for women, substitute father for mother).

Tell It to the Bees, By Fiona Shaw

Friday, 6 November 2009

Lydia Weekes is devasted by the disintegration of her marriage. Her son Charlie, a withdrawn young boy, is keyed into his mother's every mood change and emotion.

The True Deceiver, By Tove Jansson

Friday, 6 November 2009

Finnish writer and artist, Tove Jansson, is best known in this country as the creator of the Moomin stories, but her novels for adults are no less distinctive. Since her death in 2001, the author's work has become more widely available in English translation.