Taking the Lead: A Dog at Number 10 by John Crace
Boris Johnson be warned – another political “big beast” is releasing a memoir this autumn: that of Herbert Hound – Spad, Westminster veteran and… cockapoo. Like any SW1 memoirist, Hound details tales of triumph, failure and enduring feuds – most notably with Larry, the long-serving Downing Street cat, who is threatened by the prospect of quadruped rivalry at No 10.
Taking the Lead is written by the Guardian columnist John Crace, who, shortly after his daughter left home for university, adopted Herbie as a puppy to live in his south-west London residence. Crace has a tattoo of Herbie on his left arm and later got companion inkage of a stick on his right – which soon got infected and hospitalised him. Following such acts of “half-witted self destruction”, Herbie promises to keep his owner company through recovery; presumably with the agreement that Crace would then chronicle his dog’s double life walking among the beasts of both Tooting Bec Common and the House of Commons. (That, or the strength of the satirist’s medication was a great instigator for new material.) Whatever its genesis, Crace’s witty brand of humour is given new licence to roam in this Garfield-meets-Westminster memoir.
By Harry Clarke-Ezzidio
Constable, 219pp, £18.99
The Silence of the Choir by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated by Alison Anderson
When 72 refugees arrive from Africa in a small Sicilian town called Altino, each one of them is forced to reflect on what it means to meet people they know nothing about: a blind priest who rewrites their pasts, a woman committed to offering them asylum, her ex-lover determined to refuse it, or a man who was just like them a few years before. Initially full of hope, awaiting the fulfilment of the Dream, each as unique as the individual who holds onto it, the refugees, referred to as ragazzi (the boys), grapple with the polarised society that they have been thrust into.
This captivating novel by the Prix Goncourt-winning Senegalese author Mohamed Mbougar Sarr depicts an “inhuman savagery – or a savagery that was all too human”, as both the refugees and the Sicilians grow despondent with each other’s presence. Pushing at the boundaries of the novel form, The Silence of the Choir switches between fictionalised memoir, script, reportage and conventional prose. It explores the best and worst of humanity, while reflecting the heart-wrenching turmoil of those who seek asylum.
By Zuzanna Lachendro
Europa Editions, 372pp, £14.99
The Penalty Kick: The Story of a Gamechanger by Robert McCrum
The penalty kick was invented in the late 19th century by Willie McCrum, an Ulsterman, to disincentivise the otherwise unpunished sadism meted out to goalkeepers in the early days of football. His great-grandson the former literary editor Robert McCrum uses this as a hook around which to stage his Story of a Gamechanger. In the first half, Robert entwines the development of the penalty with his family’s tragic history – Willie’s drunkenness and his son Cecil’s naval disgrace. This awkward blend of penalty lore and sparse genealogical evidence clumsily leads to the implication that the penalty was somehow a deterministic factor in the unfortunate lives of his ancestors – as if its success vs failure binary and the alcoholism of “Master Willie” were somehow mutually reinforcing.
The second half, about how the penalty kick has come to be defined culturally, is more fluent. It begins by examining the psychological literature that has developed around the stresses of penalty kicks, then meanders off into the redemption arc of Gareth Southgate. But McCrum doesn’t seem to know how to draw these disparate threads together. And by the final whistle, it’s the reader who pays the real penalty.
By Barney Horner
Notting Hill Editions, 168pp, £15.99
The Power and the Glory: The Country House Before the Great War by Adrian Tinniswood
In his previous histories of the country house in the 20th century, Adrian Tinniswood served as the institution’s obituarist. He faithfully recorded the decadent spiral and, ultimately, the large-scale repurposing of aristocratic architecture for the democratic age. Now – in a move that seems to better serve his instincts for class voyeurism – he has produced a study of the imperial phase of stately homes in the late-Victorian period. This is a whirling, waltzing panorama through the last carefree age of British nobility.
Each chapter takes on the subject from the vantage of a different mullioned window. There’s the American arrivistes buying run-down Highland castles, the gardening culture war over styles of English horticulture and the epic slaughter of country sports (on one shoot at Lambton Castle, the Prince of Wales’s party took out over 2,000 pheasants). Tinniswood isn’t a historian with a revolutionary argument to make. But he is one with a terrific eye for detail and anecdote, all the better to show the country house in its most extreme age of pomp, profligacy and exuberance.
By Nicholas Harris
Jonathan Cape, 432pp, £25
[See also: From Lauren Elkin to Elizabeth Strout: new books reviewed in short]
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This article appears in the 09 Oct 2024 issue of the New Statesman, 100 days that shook Labour