Digging to America
I’ve read a number of Anne Tyler’s novels and enjoyed them. I think LADDER OF YEARS and BREATHING LESSONS are particularly good. (As I write this, the cat has just climbed into my in tray – is he trying to tell me something?). But I wasn’t so sure about AN AMATEUR MARRIAGE, nor about the […]
Out of Sheer Rage
The full title is OUT OF SHEER RAGE: IN THE SHADOW OF D. H. LAWRENCE by Geoff Dyer and I am relishing it. Dyer set out to write a book about Lawrence. What he actually wrote was a book about trying to write a book about Lawrence. This sounds tiresomely post-modern, but it’s not. It’s […]
Cookbooks
The point where comfort eating and comfort reading meet. A week or two ago I threw a big party for a special family birthday and did lunch for over thirty people. There was much list-making and anxious scanning of cookery books beforehand. This set me thinking about cookery books as a branch of literature. My […]
Tom’s Midnight Garden
One of the pleasure of having children is the excuse to read children’s books. There are some wonderful contemporary ones, but the one I want to write about today was published in 1958, so it is one I could have read as a child – and how I wish I had.I first read Philippa Pearce’s […]