Relative Failures by Matthew Sturgis: Fascinating tales of sibling rivalry
Perhaps Matthew Sturgis could add more siblings to this engaging and original study… Source link
All posts tagged: Book Reviews
Son of Nobody review: More proof that Yann Martel is a literary paper tiger
The Booker is much to blame. Yann Martel was almost entirely unknown as a writer when, in 2002, he won the prize for Life of Pi, the story of an Indian boy castaway in a boat for 227 days with a big Bengal tiger for company, an allegory of the hazardous odyssey of the soul. Shortly after his victory, Martel said: “I feel like Jesus Christ after he’s done his three days in Hell, I feel like a boy who has just discovered the joys of self-abuse, I feel like Sir Edmund Hillary after he’s stumbled to the top of Everest, all three joys all at once.” Justifiably, perhaps. For Life of Pi went on to sell 15 million copies in 50 languages and to be filmed in 3D by Ang Lee — the movie took $609 million at the box office. No other author’s fortunes have been so transformed by a prize. Yann Martel Tammy Zdunich Photography Martel’s subsequent career has been less brilliant. His proposal for a follow-up, a flip book about the …
Colm Tóibín’s tales of Ireland are already relics
Colm Tóibín is not a happy bunny in his fiction, to say the least, not one of the great lookers forward Source link
Betrayal by Tom Bower book review: Merciless, but Meghan might have the last word
Tom Bower tells us at the start of Betrayal what a lot of us wanted to know: whether Harry and Meghan are going to divorce or separate. For, as he observes, “Divorce, debt and disaster are constant themes about the Sussexes’ future”. The answer is no… “for now”. So the Gruesome Twosome (to misquote Julie Burchill) are still, it seems, an item. But two and three on that list are another matter. The Sussexes, he tells us, need three million dollars annually to keep the wolf from the door, and on every front — Netflix, Spotify, jam retailing — the income is drying up. As for the suggestion that Harry apparently entertained, of a return to being a working royal, it too looks like a non-runner. Not with his baleful brother on the case. In fact the most striking observation in this merciless account of the Sussexes is the obvious: that the fate of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor strikes a chill to Prince Harry’s heart. Not that his errors involve allegations in connection with Jeffrey Epstein; just …