It occasionally happens that my reading for work pushes my reading for pleasure into the background. Recently I realised that I had inadvertently abandoned The Evenings by Gerard Reve. It had been moved some months ago from my to-be-read pile and shoved in a cupboard while other books took precedence. It was only when I saw a review of it in the Guardian the other day that I remembered I was halfway through it. Having picked it up again, I’m now trying to figure out who all the characters are and what on earth is going on in the plot.
Anyway, in between times I’ve reviewed the following books:
Affluence Without Abundance by James Suzman – a study of the San or Bushman tribes of Namibia, in which I learned that the San believe that white people’s hair makes them look like goats and that warthogs are ‘clever, sociable, and vengeful’. Review here
Guernica: Painting the End of the World – James Attlee’s account of Picasso’s monumental painting. Apparently, Jackson Pollock was so impressed by the painting that when he overheard a fellow artist criticising it he suggested they ‘step outside and fight it out’. Review here
Ascent: A Life Spent Climbing on the Edge by Chris Bonington, in which the great British mountaineer recounts peaks climbed and comrades lost. Review here
Fifty years after publishing his first novel, Paul Theroux has just published his 31st. Mother Land is a very funny book about a feuding Cape Cod family ruled by a monstrous matriarch. This review appears in the latest edition of the Literary Review here
Right, now back to The Evenings …
Ian Critchley 