Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights: do we need new film versions?
Haven't we seen it all before? Is there any point in film and television revisiting the Brontës, Austen and Dickens? Well, yes, especially if the renderings of the British classics are as innovative as the two set for imminent release – Andrea Arnol...
‘Writing this book was the most fun I ever had’
The American author discusses the bizarre sexual fantasy world of his new novel, House of HolesIf you wonder why writers write, there's a succinct answer – at least on behalf of the male ones – in Nicholson Baker's new novel House of Holes, an anth...
The Land at the End of the World by António Lobo Antunes
An early novel by a great Portuguese writer manages to thrill despite the foulness of its visionThe land at the end of the world is poor little Portugal, backed on to a thin slice of the Iberian peninsula by boisterous Spain; it is also – in this ear...
Dante in Love by AN Wilson – review
Any merit in AN Wilson's study of Dante is lost as he pushes his own fuddy-duddy agendaThe title, I must warn you, is misleading: this is less a book about Dante in love than an excuse for AN Wilson to vent his own ideological hatreds. In place of...
Crusoe by Katherine Frank
An alternative theory of the inspiration behind Robinson Crusoe drowns in its own watery metaphorsKatherine Frank has a theory, which has sent her foraging across oceans in quest of wild geese and red herrings. She believes that Daniel Defoe based Robi...
Magpies, Squirrels & Thieves: How the Victorians Collected the World by Jacqueline Yallop – review
This engaging study of the Victorian era finds empire at the service of avid, obsessive collectorsOpening this book, I wondered with a premonitory shudder whether I'd find an anatomy of my own collecting habits inside it: would I turn out to be a thiev...
Story of a Secret State by Jan Karski
Written as a cry for help from Nazi-occupied Poland, Jan Karski's wartime memoir now tragically reads like a 40s espionage thrillerWhen Jan Karski first published his chronicle of Polish resistance to the Nazis in 1944, all he hoped for was to ensure t...
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer – review
Joshua Foer's account of his quest to become US memory champion is a dreary and pointless celebration of triviaMemory was once a cerebral lodestar, training us to be rational and ensuring that we were moral. For classical sages it regulated judgment, c...
The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey – review
James Frey isn't fooling anyone with this unmoving tale of Christ's return"James Frey," according to the hype for this novel about Christ's second coming in New York City, "is not like other writers." The marketers mean to imply that he is exalted abov...
Arthur Miller: 1962-2005 by Christopher Bigsby
A sympathetic account of Arthur Miller's later life depicts the playwright struggling to accept his creative demiseAs F Scott Fitzgerald ruefully noted, there are no second acts in American life: the impatient marketplace decrees that early success lea...
Listen to This by Alex Ross – review
Alex Ross's follow-up to The Rest is Noise delights in blurring the lines between pop, classical and jazzThe title of Alex Ross's book – a collection essays that supplements The Rest is Noise, his superb history of music in the 20th century – reall...
A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided by Amanda Foreman – review
A history of the American civil war focuses on Britain's shamefully self-interested role, says Peter ConradThe two nations are divided, according to Amanda Foreman's history of the American civil war and its repercussions in Britain, not by a common la...
