http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/sunday-review/arts-and-books/?service=Rss http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-and-tv/features/the-joy-of-six-the-leading-ladies-of-david-lean-856339.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-and-tv/features/the-joy-of-six-the-leading-ladies-of-david-lean-856339.html Features Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:24 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/book-extract-trauma-by-patrick-mcgrath-854938.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/book-extract-trauma-by-patrick-mcgrath-854938.html <p>She was wearing a short black jacket over a man's white shirt unbuttoned to her breasts, and a short black skirt. Her hair was slicked back with some sort of gel, and she wore glasses with heavy black frames. Bare legs, black shoes with low heels. I told her later that she looked like a librarian with a secret. Later still I told her she was wanton. But first we had to get through dinner. When she first came into the restaurant I'd watched with quickened heartbeat as she spoke to the waiter, who'd turned to point at where I was waiting with my arm uplifted in the shadows at the back of the room. As I rose with stiffening penis to greet her, she paused, then kissed me lightly on the lips. She was fragrant. </p> Features Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/complaint-by-julian-baggini-854940.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/complaint-by-julian-baggini-854940.html <p>Here is "a meta-complaint", a complaint about complaint, in which Julian Baggini argues that we're just not very good at it. We complain about things which cannot be changed, or things which shouldn't be changed. The first is a waste of emotional energy and arises from "an infantile unwillingness" to accept imperfection. The second, including such varieties as "Self-Serving Complaints" and "Misdirected Complaints", often makes things worse. What we should aim at is "Right Complaint", which has a noble history and achievements such as votes for women and the abolition of slavery to its credit.</p> Reviews Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-book-of-famem-by-lloyd-jones-854947.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-book-of-famem-by-lloyd-jones-854947.html <p>This semi-fictionalised account of the All Blacks' first ever tour of Great Britain in 1905 is written in the first person plural, and records the New Zealanders' growing fame as they notched up a string of one-sided victories (final points tally 830 for, 39 against). There are good descriptions of the sporting action and of the New Zealanders' impressions of this crowded, industrialised, often inhospitable nation, while its nostalgic appeal is strong (it's nice to read about a rugby team who all smoke pipes). </p> Reviews Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-fighters-heart-by-sam-sheridan-854949.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-fighters-heart-by-sam-sheridan-854949.html <p>What exactly, in this age of health and safety and fabric softener and pay-as-you-go personal injury lawyers, makes two outwardly-normal men want to jump into a ring and cause each other extreme physical damage? How can we rationalise the enduring attraction of boxing, or cage-fighting, or any other form of regimented violence that still passes as a sport? These are the questions that Sam Sheridan attempts to answer in this frequently compelling study of the testosterone-fuelled world of recreational fighting &ndash; a world that currently finds itself in the middle of a somewhat controversial, and highly-lucrative, TV-driven consumer revolution.</p> Reviews Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-fraction-of-the-whole-by-steve-toltz-854951.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-fraction-of-the-whole-by-steve-toltz-854951.html <p> It's no surprise that the Australian author of A Fraction of the Whole, at 36, is a little older than we've come to expect from our debut novelists. This absurdly incident-laden, feverish, farcical 700-page life story bears the watermark of long gestation. What's more, it stands above the vast majority of debut novels because it seems so marvellously sure of itself and what it should be.</p> Reviews Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/joanna-kavenna-how-the-author-turned-from-unpublishable-failure-to-prizewinning-writer-854955.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/joanna-kavenna-how-the-author-turned-from-unpublishable-failure-to-prizewinning-writer-854955.html <p>'... "Dear Viracocha, Buddha, Osiris, Isis, Zeus, Allah, Jehovah, Shiva, Humbaba, Zabalon and the rest, What is it that you want me to do? Just what is it? Yours expectantly, Rosa." </p> Features Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-and-tv/features/brief-encounters-how-david-leans-sex-life-shaped-his-films-854957.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-and-tv/features/brief-encounters-how-david-leans-sex-life-shaped-his-films-854957.html <p> When David Lean left London for Paris in the spring of 1955, the film-maker's finances were in a parlous state. The 47-year-old had separated from his wife, the actor Ann Todd (whom he was to divorce two years later), while the taxman was clamouring for payment of &pound;20,000 &ndash; an astronomical amount for those days &ndash; in unpaid dues.</p> Features Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/sea-of-poppies-by-amitav-ghosh-854959.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/sea-of-poppies-by-amitav-ghosh-854959.html <p>Amitav Ghosh's eighth doorstop of a novel is set in his native Calcutta where, in 1838, the British East India Company's lucrative opium trade is feeling the pinch from Canton's embargo on poppy imports. Self-made merchant Ben Burnham has purchased the Ibis, an old slaver, to ply the Chinese territories with narcotics from Calcutta, and he frequently moralises on his divine right to force opium on the Chinese. "Merchants like myself are but the servants of free trade, which is as immutable as God's commandments," he declares, with the bombastic false modesty usually reserved for glazing heinous exploitations with a sheen of religious nobility. </p> Reviews Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/refresh-refresh-by-benjamin-percy-854961.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/refresh-refresh-by-benjamin-percy-854961.html <p>Blood is spilt in every one of these 10 stories, whether as the result of a fight, a car crash, a gunshot wound, the killing of an elk or a mauling by a bear. In one story a man falls from a tree and breaks his pelvis; blood fills his scrotum until it's the size of a baby's head. Written in an urgent present tense, every story starts out tough and gets tougher. Events follow a wild, remorseless logic of their own. Whenever you expect Percy to touch the brakes, he hits the accelerator. Few of the stories end calmly, with the plot neatly wrapped up; Percy prefers to end on a note of ongoing tension. "When the Bear Came" leaves the reader with the memorable image of a giant grizzly straining at the leash that holds it, staring ferociously into the eyes of the man who stands 10 paces away with a levelled rifle.</p> Reviews Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-wall-romes-greatest-frontier-by-alistair-moffat-854967.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-wall-romes-greatest-frontier-by-alistair-moffat-854967.html <p>Hadrian's Wall can no more be seen from space than the Great Wall of China, but it remains one of the greatest feats of the Roman era. Running 73 miles from sea to shining sea, and then as much as another 50 south down the Cumbrian coast &ndash; a much-neglected detail &ndash; it was a stony, unflinching statement of Roman power and prestige. </p> Reviews Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-death-in-tuscany-by-michele-giuttaritrs-howard-curtis-854969.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-death-in-tuscany-by-michele-giuttaritrs-howard-curtis-854969.html <p>The case begins with the discovery of the scantily-clad corpse of a teenage girl, and Supt Michele Ferrara's investigation soon turns up another murder, a kidnapping, a drugs racket and a paedophile ring, plus the involvement of the Freemasons, the Mafia and a gang of psychotic Albanians. </p> Reviews Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/uncommon-arrangements-by-katie-roiphe-854970.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/uncommon-arrangements-by-katie-roiphe-854970.html <p>Included in Katie Roiphe's elegantly written account of seven unorthodox literary marriages between 1910 and 1939 are H G and Jane Wells, Vanessa and Clive Bell, Katherine Mansfield and Middleton Murry, and Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge; infidelities, semi-detached marriages, ménages &#224; trois, bisexuality and lesbian cohabitation. These experiments in living together, conducted by a small number of literary lions in revolt against Victorian repression, demanded much courage. But in avoiding the hypocrisy of the Victorians, they invented new hypocrisies of their own. </p> Reviews Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/burghley-william-cecil-at-the-court-of-elizabeth-i-by-stephen-alford-850565.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/burghley-william-cecil-at-the-court-of-elizabeth-i-by-stephen-alford-850565.html <p>Stephen Alford is a notable product of the St Andrews school of 16th-century history, of which the most prominent exponent was his teacher John Guy. It focused the attention of scholars on the importance of political culture as a means of understanding what went on in the government of the time, and both of Alford's previous books have been in that field. What he has produced here is something different: an old-fashioned, cradle-to-grave biography of the most important and long-lived of all Elizabethan ministers, the queen's secretary and Lord Treasurer, Lord Burghley. It is a classic example of history written to the highest standards of professional scholarship but also given a style and subject matter that make it an exciting experience for any intelligent reader.</p> Reviews Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/mere-anarchy-by-woody-allen-850566.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/mere-anarchy-by-woody-allen-850566.html <p>It has long been a cliché to say of Woody Allen's films that one prefers the earlier, funny ones. But this is the first collection of his comic prose published in 27 years, so it should still be allowable to say that his earlier collections beat it for originality and comic zest, hands down. </p> Reviews Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-story-of-forgetting-by-stefan-merrill-block-850570.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-story-of-forgetting-by-stefan-merrill-block-850570.html <p>The Story of Forgetting is a debut novel by an American writer with more than literary ambition at stake. Stefan Merrill Block has invested his family's health in this book. His subject, Alzheimer's, has waged what he calls a "slow, unsparing warpath" across generations of his family, returning its sufferers to the children they once were. But, conversely, Block's genetic curse has given him material that is overflowing with meaning and vitality. </p> Reviews Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/what-is-she-doing-here-by-kate-clanchy-850571.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/what-is-she-doing-here-by-kate-clanchy-850571.html <p>Kate Clanchy's new book, What Is She Doing Here?, can be described as a memoir of her relationship with a Kosovan refugee, Antigona, but it is much more than that. Antigona escapes from her devastated village by way of Italy to London, where she meets, befriends and is employed by Clanchy. The bond between the two women is fraught but strong, caught in the contradiction of their roles as employer, employee and friend. But, as Clanchy finds the words to write Antigona's story, we begin to hear Antigona's own voice, one that both educates and angers the narrator, and, above all, makes her question many things about her life.</p> Reviews Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/falling-man-by-don-delillo-850575.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/falling-man-by-don-delillo-850575.html <p>Before 2001, in his giant novels of ideas, Don DeLillo wrote about terrorism, the media and the American psyche in ways that later seemed to have warned of 9/11 all along. He has now, since 2001, written two noticeably slimmer novels, featuring, it has to be said, fewer Big Ideas. Falling Man, which opens amid the dust and confusion in that moment between the collapsing of the two twin towers, is his inevitable 9/11 novel. But it is a strangely decentred, enervated story, about the afterlife of just one of its survivors and not much else.</p> Reviews Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/book-extract-the-impostor-by-damon-galgut-850578.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/book-extract-the-impostor-by-damon-galgut-850578.html <p>Now they have walked into a tall, sepulchral space, in which Adam's eyes have to adjust. He sees constituent elements before he sees the whole: slate floors, high conical roof, prints of wildlife paintings on the walls, between signboards with names on them like reception, wellness centre, conference rooms. It feels as if it should be jammed with people, but the place is empty. The sound of their feet quavers coldly around them. </p> Features Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-mistresss-daughter-by-a-m-homes-850585.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-mistresss-daughter-by-a-m-homes-850585.html <p>A M Homes, who is among the very best of the current crop of American fiction writers dealing in the malaise and dislocation of modern suburban living, reveals in this memoir that she "grew up with the feeling of being kept at a distance"; and that she has "often felt the difference between who I arrived as and who I've become; layer upon layer piling up until it feels I am coated with a bad veneer, the cheap panelling of a suburban recreation room". In The Mistress's Daughter these layers are peeled back and exposed.</p> Reviews Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-stuff-of-thought-language-as-a-window-into-human-nature-by-steven-pinker-850588.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-stuff-of-thought-language-as-a-window-into-human-nature-by-steven-pinker-850588.html <p> No doubt, as a reader of these pages, you have a sophisticated and keen appreciation for language; are sensitive to the appeal of an elegantly expressed thought and the ugliness of an ungrammatical sentence. You'll have noticed that the way a person uses language to frame their thoughts can tell us as much about the person as it does about their thoughts. </p> Reviews Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/gwilym-simcock-the-prodigious-pianist-reveals-the-music-that-gets-his-fingers-twitching-850593.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/gwilym-simcock-the-prodigious-pianist-reveals-the-music-that-gets-his-fingers-twitching-850593.html <p>You are in a concert hall. You don't know where it is located or why you're there. The lights are down. A man you don't recognise, wearing unremarkable clothing, walks across the stage, towards a grand piano. He faces the keyboard, sits down, cracks his knuckles, levels his hands and... you wake up. </p> Features Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/sunday-review/arts-and-books/karin-slaughter-the-crime-writer-reveals-why-she-doesnt-flinch-from-extreme-violence-850594.html http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/sunday-review/arts-and-books/karin-slaughter-the-crime-writer-reveals-why-she-doesnt-flinch-from-extreme-violence-850594.html <p>Two years ago I interviewed Ian Rankin for this newspaper. In the middle of a wide-ranging discussion he said something he may have since come to regret. "The people writing the most graphic violence today are women," he told me, then continued, "They are mostly lesbians as well, which I find interesting."</p> Arts & Books Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/where-three-roads-meet-by-salley-vickers-850598.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/where-three-roads-meet-by-salley-vickers-850598.html <p>It is September 1938 and Sigmund Freud, exiled from Nazi-occupied Austria and finally succumbing to a cancer he's had for 15 years, is on his death-couch in a heavily medicated state. Breezing through the French windows of his Hampstead home comes Tiresias, the blind priest from the Delphic oracle, who over the ensuing days gives his account of the events that inspired the doctor's most famous theory.</p> Reviews Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/sunday-review/little-miss-riff-four-more-plucky-women-846792.html http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/sunday-review/little-miss-riff-four-more-plucky-women-846792.html The New Review Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:02 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/bad-idea-the-anthology-ed-jack-roberts-and-daniel-stacey-845784.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/bad-idea-the-anthology-ed-jack-roberts-and-daniel-stacey-845784.html <p> Addressing a class at Berkley's Graduate School, Clay Felker, the owner of The Village Voice and co-founder of New York magazine, suggested to the future editors of Bad Idea magazine that the internet age was promoting an interest in &quot;the obscure, in the trivial and private&quot;. He complained that people didn't understand what a magazine was any more: &quot;A magazine has to stand for values that a lot of people care about, and take an interest in. It has to be about a Big Idea.&quot; </p> Reviews Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/blackmoor-by-edward-hogan-845786.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/blackmoor-by-edward-hogan-845786.html <p>Vincent Cartwright lives with his father, George, close to the site of an abandoned Derbyshire mining village, Blackmoor. George is continually at war with the world. Vincent has a hard time at school, where the other kids call him "bird man" because of his passion for bird-watching.</p> Reviews Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/bonk-the-curious-coupling-of-sex-and-science-by-mary-roach-845787.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/bonk-the-curious-coupling-of-sex-and-science-by-mary-roach-845787.html <p>Mary Roach's study of how scientists have invested time and effort investigating the ways people achieve sexual gratification makes for startling reading. Even hearing the titles of the texts she read during her research is eye-opening: "I have no doubt that I'm a running joke at the interlibrary loan department of the San Francisco Public Library, where I have requested papers with titles like 'On the Function of Groaning and Hyper-ventilation During Intercourse' and 'Vacuum Cleaner Use in Auto-Erotic Death'." </p> Reviews Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/book-extract-julian-maclarenross-selected-letters-edited-by-paul-willetts-845794.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/book-extract-julian-maclarenross-selected-letters-edited-by-paul-willetts-845794.html Features Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/gods-behaving-badly-by-marie-phillips-845798.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/gods-behaving-badly-by-marie-phillips-845798.html <p>This energetic romp has the Greek gods living in modern-day Hampstead. They've been here since the 17th century, "when the plague was keeping property prices rock bottom, and just before the destruction of the Great Fire sent them spiralling upwards again", thanks to shrewd investments by Athena, the goddess of wisdom. </p> Reviews Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/the-guitar-goddesses-who-are-playing-the-men-off-the-stage-845799.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/the-guitar-goddesses-who-are-playing-the-men-off-the-stage-845799.html <p> Who are the greatest guitarists of all time? It's an old debate, but one that always features the same players: Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and BB King inevitably crop up &ndash; or maybe you're more inclined towards Jack White, Frank Zappa or Eric Clapton. Either way, ever since inventor George Beauchamp first plugged in his guitar in the early 1930s, the axe-hero club has been almost exclusively male. </p> Features Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/jhumpa-lahiri-writing-makes-me-so-vulnerable-845803.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/jhumpa-lahiri-writing-makes-me-so-vulnerable-845803.html <p>There are not, I suspect, many authors who prefer never to read reviews and profiles of themselves. "It's just too much, like looking into a mirror all the time," says Jhumpa Lahiri. This is a pity, as she's missing considerable acclaim. </p> Features Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/marlborough-englands-fragile-genius-by-richard-holmes-845804.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/marlborough-englands-fragile-genius-by-richard-holmes-845804.html <p>Until a generation or so ago John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, vied with Wellington for the accolade of being England's greatest general. Now, thanks to History's optional place in the school curriculum, and teachers' concentration on Hitler and Stalin, he is an almost forgotten figure from an almost untaught period.</p> Reviews Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/romanno-bridge-by-andrew-greig-845808.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/romanno-bridge-by-andrew-greig-845808.html <p>A frenzied hunt across the Scottish Highlands for a mythic artefact. A secret passed down the ages from keeper to keeper. Runes and cryptic messages to decipher, hoodlums to dodge, elderly historians to be consulted shortly before their violent deaths... At first glance Andrew Greig's new novel seems like a home-grown, rather indignant riposte to The Da Vinci Code. </p> Reviews Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-standing-pool-by-adam-thorpe-845811.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-standing-pool-by-adam-thorpe-845811.html <p>When Adam Thorpe declares on the opening page of his new novel that the provincial French farmhouse at its heart has had its name changed from Mas des Fosses to Mas du Paradis, we can be sure that the information is not incidental. Sure enough, when the Mallinson family move there for a six-month sabbatical, they discover a very dark and earthy underside to their Eden. </p> Reviews Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-town-with-no-twin-by-barry-pilton-845812.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-town-with-no-twin-by-barry-pilton-845812.html <p>Glance at any page of Barry Pilton's novel and you'll experience the qualities that make him such a frustrating writer. Every other paragraph he writes something amusing; but he is also the kind of author who chuckles at fat people and women who don't subscribe to Glamour magazine-type grooming tips. Laugh at people like that and, as any hack humorist knows, a good chunk of the world usually laughs with you.</p> Reviews Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/tim-fountain-im-not-just-a-sex-freak-841011.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/tim-fountain-im-not-just-a-sex-freak-841011.html <p> I once signed up for Mary Whitehouse's team. It was at an Oxford Union debate in the 1980s and I thought it'd be boring to speak on the side of progress and liberation. So I volunteered to be on the old bat's side against the tedious Erica Jong and her famous zipless fucks. Then, maddeningly, Mary cried off and I wanted to change sides. </p> Features Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:30 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/before-i-die-by-jenny-downham-840971.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/before-i-die-by-jenny-downham-840971.html <p>Sixteen-year-old Tessa has leukaemia and only months to live. Her defiant response is to make a list of 10 things to do before she dies &ndash; some easy of accomplishment, such as having sex and taking drugs; others more difficult, such as falling in love and seeing her parents get back together. This novel also details her changing relationships with her family, her best friend and the boyfriend she acquires in the nick of time. The style is plain and direct &ndash; not subtle, but effective, like Jacqueline Wilson for slightly older readers. It brings home the utter arbitrariness and non-negotiability of death; at the same time, it reawakens the reader to the nowness of life. Tessa is sometimes unsympathetic, taking pleasure in the discomfiture her illness causes &ndash; but that, unfortunately, is what we are like when we're teenagers and it makes her dying ordeal more believable than would a display of saintliness. </p> Reviews Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/looking-for-enid-by-duncan-mclaren-840976.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/looking-for-enid-by-duncan-mclaren-840976.html <p>A biography of Enid Blyton, but a peculiar one &ndash; this is as much about the biographer as it is about the biographee. McLaren, a lifelong Blyton fan, takes to the road with his girlfriend, visiting sites where Blyton lived, worked and set her books &ndash; including, of course, her country house Green Hedges where she lived with her second husband and wrote the most celebrated of her 600 books, including the Famous Five series, the Malory Towers series and the Noddy books. Each chapter ends with a curious parody of a Five Find-Outers mystery, with Fatty appearing to represent McLaren himself, and little Bets his girlfriend Kate. </p> Reviews Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/book-extract-stonehenge-by-rosemary-hill-840978.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/book-extract-stonehenge-by-rosemary-hill-840978.html <p>Antiquaries were a relatively new intellectual species, largely a product of the Reformation, and they were interested in what could be discovered of the past by looking beyond the written records. They studied anything that was old &ndash; stones, metal, pottery, coins &ndash; attracting in the process much derision from contemporaries who thought it an "unnaturall disease" to be so "enamour'd of old age and wrinkles". Yet the antiquaries were the first archaeologists. They were also the first oral historians, costume historians, art historians and folklorists. They opened up vast intellectual horizons and if, as later archaeologists have sometimes been quick to point out, they made mistakes, they were not alone in that and, working in an age before academic specialisation, before science and the arts had parted company, they were also able to make daring and useful connections. </p> Features Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-goneaway-world-by-nick-harkaway-840983.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-goneaway-world-by-nick-harkaway-840983.html <p>There were whispers of nepotism when this debut novel by John le Carré's son was bought for a reputed &pound;300,000 last year. But on reading this magnificent, sprawling, epic work, it's clear it was published on its own merits, and is probably worth considerably more than the amount Heinemann paid for it.</p> Reviews Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-meaning-of-life-by-terry-eagleton-840985.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-meaning-of-life-by-terry-eagleton-840985.html <p>Eagleton pre-emptively announces on page one that he's not a philosopher, but anyone tackling this subject is de facto a philosopher; the question is, how good? Eagleton indulges in some needlessly laboured analysis of terms, but is less interested in philosophical argument than in sticking it to his enemies, those pesky liberal humanists. </p> Reviews Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/isabella-demedici-by-caroline-p-murphy-840986.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/isabella-demedici-by-caroline-p-murphy-840986.html <p>The spirited Renaissance beauty Isabella de' Medici (1542-1576) was the daughter of Cosimo, who established the Medicis as the pre-eminent political family in 16th-century Florence. She became the city's "First Lady" on her mother's death in 1562. Exuberant, profligate and hedonistic, she had an inordinate passion for hunting, music and poetry. In the womb she was so lively that her mother was convinced she would be a boy and, throughout her life, her "masculine" vivacity was remarked upon. </p> Reviews Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-phoenix-by-leo-hollis-840990.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-phoenix-by-leo-hollis-840990.html <p>Throughout history there have been patterns to thrill the numerologist. Ronald Knox pointed out in his book Let Dons Delight that certain events seem to happen at particular intervals. Professor Nicholas Boyle, the president of Magdalene College, Cambridge, argues that there is a marked order to Great Events, with the character of a century being shaped by a major incident in the middle of the second decade. But I'm not sure if the numerologists have cottoned on to '66. There was 1066, when England became Norman. Then there was 1966, and Geoff Hurst's hat trick which won England the World Cup. But the daddy of them all has to be 1666, when the City of London was laid waste as the Great Fire swept all aside. The four-day-long inferno, which began on 2 September in a baker's in Pudding Lane, gutted 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, six consecrated chapels, and all the major government and business buildings, from the Guildhall and the Royal Exchange, the Custom House, to prisons, company halls, gates and bridges. The stained glass in St Paul's Cathedral liquefied, beer boiled in barrels and burst through them to run down the streets, and the air was filled with the rich stench of burning spices. As the diarist John Evelyn looked upon the sight of his city ablaze, he wrote of the "miserable and calamitous spectacle". "London," he wrote, "was, but is no more."</p> Reviews Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/redemption-falls-by-joseph-oconnor-840991.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/redemption-falls-by-joseph-oconnor-840991.html <p>Joseph O'Connor is marvellously versatile: this novel consists of a collage of first-person narratives, authorial overview, journal entries, letters, newspaper articles, acrostics, poems, footnotes, advertisements, transcripts of court proceedings and ballads which are often better than the 19th-century originals they imitate &ndash; and by that I do not mean that they are more literary, but more ballady. </p> Reviews Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/1000-songs-to-change-your-life-840993.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/1000-songs-to-change-your-life-840993.html <p>As the introduction cheerfully admits, not all of the songs featured here will change your life, but given that there are not just 1,000 but 1,577 of them, there is a fair chance that one or two might. The book takes the form of a series of essays by Time Out contributors on various categories of song: songs about home, about travel, about food, about drugs, songs used in film soundtracks, English songs, gospel songs, comedy songs, miserabilist country songs and songs by gender-bending artists. Pop, rock, jazz, hip-hop and classical music are all represented, and the essays are intercut with reprinted TO interviews with such luminaries as Morrissey, Paul Simon, Burt Bacharach and Johnny Cash, plus various artists on their favourites. (Would you have guessed that David Byrne would opt for Missy Elliott's "Work It"? Or that one of Dizzee Rascal's faves is Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"?) And, of course, lists: the top 10 songs about London, the top 10 songs featuring the name Caroline. </p> Reviews Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/massive-attacks-curation-of-the-southbank-meltdown-season-is-a-tantalising-prospect-841119.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/massive-attacks-curation-of-the-southbank-meltdown-season-is-a-tantalising-prospect-841119.html <p>As portfolios go, it is a rather slim one. Since their first, independently produced single "Any Love" in 1988, Massive Attack &ndash; whose Southbank Meltdown season begins on Saturday, when they play the first of two performances at the Royal Festival Hall &ndash; have released only four albums of original material. A fifth is promised later this year, but, given the glacial pace at which the band work, "later" can mean a very long time. </p> Features Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:00:01 +0100