So who is the man behind what may well come to be seen as the defining novel of credit-crunch Britain (as if producing one of the best financial books of recent years weren’t enough)? What enables him to be so versatile?
In the Observer, William Skidelsky profiles John Lanchester.
In the Observer, Alex Preston reviews Jon McGregor’s This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You.
The 30 fiercely imagined stories in Jon McGregor’s collection share an extraordinary topophilia: each bears as its subtitle the name of a fenland town or village, and even in tales that range widely across space and time we never lose touch with the flat Lincolnshire landscape.
Recommended with reservations.
For the London Review of Books, Jenny Diski surveys the state of publishing and finds it dire.
I understand that as financial concerns publishers are supposed to make a profit. Further assumptions mysteriously follow this one. I’ve been told quite often, by readers and literature students and some writers, that if a book sells well, it is by definition good.
Not recommended.
Recommended with reservations.
Stuart Jeffries’s obituary of Gilbert Adair appears in the Guardian.
Recommended.
