Helen Dunmore, The Betrayal
Jane Shilling in the Telegraph describes Helen Dunmore’s sequel to The Siege as a “lovely, thoughtful novel”, which acts for readers of the novels precursor as chance to discover “the fates of the surviving members of the Levin family – Anna, her husband, Andrei, and younger brother, Kolya”. She finds that “Dunmore’s lyric gift is at its best when describing the domestic minutiae that seem so unspeakably precious in the absence of security”, and that “Only when the horrors become real does Dunmore’s power to disturb weaken.”
For Lucy Daniel in the Sunday Telegraph, this novel is “not just an impressive, enthralling sequel but part of an ongoing saga of ordinary people struggling against a city’s beautiful indifference, and clinging on for dear life”, and an exercise in “personalising a collective experience of momentous times”. Katy Guest in the Independent on Sunday describes Dunmore’s prose as “sensuous, physical and almost synaesthetic … also sparse and elegant when needs be”, while her skill as a novelist is “brave, tender and with a unique gift for immersing the reader in the taste, smell and fear of a story.” For Scarlett Thomas in the Financial Times, “This is such a page-turner, and is in places so gruesome, that reading it becomes more visceral than intellectual”.
Jim Crace, All that Follows
Adam Lively in the Sunday Times describes Crace’s new novel as “a book that for all its stylistic precision and intelligence is, as a whole, curiously half-hearted and out of kilter”. Lively identifies the influence of other writers on this novel about an ageing jazz musician: Hari Kunzru, and “The real spectre that haunts the pages of All That Follows, however, is not a ghost from the past but Philip Roth. His influence is everywhere”, so the novel “suffers from the sense of treading well-worn paths.” Lively also finds that “the politics and the futuristic setting remain sketchy in the extreme.”
By contrast, Giles Foden in the Guardian writes that “Crace has some satirical fun with this invented but not unlikely landscape”, but he agrees that the novel is influenced by predecessors: “Crace isn’t just nodding at Ian McEwan’s Saturday. At other moments it is Don DeLillo who comes to mind, another writer who has been influenced by jazz and who has written about hostage-taking”. He concludes that “Part of the book’s attraction is its modesty, the way it gets big ideas down to a small domestic canvas on which individual emotions and family dynamics are authentically realised”, and that “All That Follows is both thought-provoking and a delight to read.” Ian Thomson in the Financial Times praises Crace’s “spare but resonant prose”, but finds it “more conventional” than his previous efforts.
Rob Chapman, Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head
Lynn Barber in the Sunday Times writes that “This is a book of two halves, one memorable, one not”; she elaborates: “It is the second half of the book, about the life of Roger Barrett, that is interesting, because we don’t often read the life of a recluse.” Barber suggests that this may be because writer “Rob Chapman had full co-operation from Barrett’s sister Rosemary and other family members, whereas the Floyds refused to talk.”
Sean O’Hagan in the Observer describes the book as a “fitfully illuminating biography”, finding that “Chapman has unravelled the skeins of rumour, exaggeration and anecdote that have been wound so tightly around Barrett”, although he agrees that the book “inevitably suffers from his absence – and that of Pink Floyd, all of whom declined to be interviewed for the book”. He concludes: “If Chapman overstates the case for Barrett’s songwriting genius and sometimes writes from the point of view of an obsessive on a mission to rehabilitate his hero, A Very Irregular Head is a consistently illuminating, and often surprising, read.”
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