David Yaffe - Reckless Daughter: A Portrait Of Joni Mitchell

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good biography

I wasn't sure what to expect from Reckless Daughter.  There are an awful lot of terrible showbiz biographies around, so as someone who has loved Joni Mitchell's music for nigh on half a century now I approached this with some trepidation – but it turns out to be very good.  Yaffe's style is readable and pretty straightforward and although it's a little over-written in places for my taste I never found that intruding too badly and I found the whole thing an enjoyable and fascinating read.

David Yaffe knows his stuff and covers the whole of Joni Mitchell's life in interesting but not excessive detail.  He has known Joni personally for a long time and has spoken to her extensively for this book.  He has also spoken to a very wide variety of others who know her from childhood friends to musical collaborators and the friends of older age; what seems like a genuine picture emerges of a stunningly talented musician who, partly as a result of formative experience is tough, thoroughly individual, headstrong and self-reliant.  As a woman, this has brought her a good deal of criticism over the years, but thank heavens she is who she is because it has enabled her to create and record a body of work which is among the finest of all musical creations of the last half century, in my view.  Yaffe doesn't skate over her less personable sides; he obviously likes and admires her very much but this is never a hagiography and it seems to me to be a pretty balanced portrait which thinks seriously about how Joni's life experience may shaped her and her music, but– praise be! – doesn’t go in for excessive speculative psychologising.

Part of the genius in Joni Mitchell's lyrics is that they are so often plainly intensely personal, but they speak to me of things in my own experience, often very indirectly but with great poignancy.  Learning more about the experiences which gave rise to many of these songs is fascinating to me, and only intensifies their significance.  Many, many years after I first heard and loved Little Green, I remember her revealing that it was about being forced by circumstance to give up her beloved baby for adoption.  Even after those decades, it gave it an added poignancy which I have felt ever since.  I'm not sure that there are revelations here which had quite the same impact on me, but it has certainly enriched my understanding and enjoyment of a lot of Joni's music.

The word "genius" is very over-used about artists of all kinds, but I think it may be justly applied to Joni Mitchell who is one of the very greatest of all songwriters and performers.  I think this is a biography which is worthy of its subject and I can recommend this to any Joni Mitchell fan - which, let's face it, ought to be everybody.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Daniel Handler - All The Dirty Parts

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good book

I thought All The Dirty Parts was very good in many ways.  It's well written and has some valuable things to say.  (It's worth saying at the outset that there is a lot of extremely frank talk about sex, often expressed in what TV announcers call Very Strong Language, so if you don't like all that then this won't be a book for you.)

The book is narrated by Cole, a young man at High School in a small US town who is, shall we say, sexually active.  It's an episodic narrative in short sections with no chapters which for me gave it a strong drive.  It is hard to say much about the story without giving too much away, but Daniel Handler captures well Cole's unthinking, exploitative sexism, his obsession with sex and the painful learning which that brings.

The book is short (only 140 pages or so) but Handler's style manages to cram a lot into it.  I was Cole's age in the early 1970s, which was a very different age indeed; I didn't think or behave as Cole does, so I can't really vouch for the authenticity of his present-day experience, but his voice, his internal experiences and his behaviour seemed very well drawn and plausible to me.  I found it an easy and compelling read and although the message was not an original one, it makes its points pretty well, although the later parts did seem just a little unsubtle.  Nonetheless, it held my attention to the last. 

It is almost impossible to quote from the book because of the subject matter and language, but one bit which I liked in language suitable for a review here was: "For every girl I thought I was uncomplicated sex, it wasn't.  Put it this way: if you can't see the complication, you're probably it."

Teenage boys especially should read this, but so should anyone looking for a portrait of a certain kind of modern teenage male mind.  It's not a groundbreaking classic but it's very readable and makes important points.  Recommended.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Amy Lloyd - The Innocent Wife

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Not for me

I am out of step with the great majority of readers, but I'm afraid I didn't get on with The Innocent Wife.

Sam, an insecure and lonely teacher from England, falls for a man on Death Row in Florida with whose case she has been fascinated for years.  She visits him in the Florida jail, becomes involved in the making of a new documentary about the case and then delightedly agrees to marry him.  As the book and the research for the film progress, we get a psychological study of Sam and a "did he/didn't he?" plot which becomes very sinister and threatening.

My problem with the book is principally that I simply didn't find Sam's character  either interesting or convincing.  I can see the points Amy Lloyd is making, but I just didn't believe it, somehow.  Added to this a plot which felt very well-worn and, frankly, I just lost interest.

I'm sorry to be critical of a decently-written book, and especially of a first novel, but that's my honest reaction.  I seem to be virtually alone in this so don't let me put you off; plenty of thoughtful readers enjoyed The Innocent Wife very much, but it wasn't for me.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley)

Sarah MIllican - How To Be Champion

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Funny and powerful

I enjoyed How To be Champion.  I like Sarah Millican's stand-up, and this, too, is funny (of course), human and thoughtful.

It may be worth beginning with a warning that there is a lot of very frank and intimate talk about sex and bodily functions of all kinds, often using what the TV continuity people would warn us is Very Strong Language.  Personally I find this refreshing and often very funny, but if it's not your thing then this definitely isn't a book for you.

It is a book for me, though.  I liked the account of her growing up and becoming a comedian; it's easy to read, it made me smile and sometimes laugh out loud.  There is also some sage advice based on her experiences, many of which are very recognisable to a lot of us.  However, the book really came alive for me in its last hundred pages or so, with some excellent, extended passages about the treatment of women by the media and social media, the difficulty of being a celebrity and how people feel free to say all manner of hurtful things ("If you're famous, people think you're not a real person") and so on.  Well, it's obvious from this that she is a real person, and a very fine one at that.  These are angry, witty and powerful pieces which are spot-on in their analysis and which everyone should read.  It is this which sets the book well above the run-of-the-mill celebrity autobiography for me.

Alongside this are some very funny takes on less world-changing aspects of everyday life.  As an example, having found a tin of marrowfat peas in her cupoard: "I'm quite new to peas.  They were one of the things I definitely didn’t like as a child without ever having tried them.  Turns out they're really nice, though.  I only dabble in garden peas. I've heard they are a gateway pea."  And the book ends with a wonderful extended riff on baking a cake, with a real recipe in there, too.

Overall, this gets 4.5 stars from me, but I've rounded it up because I thought the later sections were so good.  Oh, and she says early on in a slightly despairing tone about the shallowness of young men, "There are men who find wit sexy…"   You're right, Sarah – some of us do.  And more power to you.

Edward St. Aubyn - Dunbar

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Excellent

I thought Dunbar was excellent.  I approached it with a little trepidation because a modern re-imagining of the King Lear story could have been worthy or turgid or forbidding or just plain terrible.  In fact I found it gripping, witty, touching and very readable.

Henry Dunbar, the Lear character, is a billionaire media mogul and the machinations of the characters are in the business and financial worlds which, given the events of the last couple of decades, works extremely well.  In the characters of  Abigail and Megan (Goneril and Regan), St. Aubyn catches the lazily indignant sense of entitlement and the unthinking, self-absorbed cruelty of the over-privileged sisters.  Dunbar escapes from an institution in the Lake District to which these two have secretly committed him, and we get a brilliant picture of a disintegrating mind as he wanders the fells…and so on. 

The plot is recognisable without being slavish to the original, and St Aubyn uses it for some very well-aimed barbs at modern finance, the behaviour of the super-rich and other aspects of contemporary life.  He writes beautifully, in prose that is elegant but simply carries you along without drawing self-regarding attention to itself.  I marked lots of neat passages and phrases, like an institution which "could not keep up with the modern demand for a place in which to neglect the mad, the old and the dying," or the rich, powerful man who "knew what it was to be surrounded by a halo of hollow praise," which seemed especially apt in 2017.  The humanity and pity of the play are all there, too, and in the context I found, "Florence, is that you?  I've been looking for you everywhere," every bit as moving as,

" Do not laugh at me;
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia"

which for me is really saying something.

In short, I found Dunbar readable, gripping, witty, moving and insightful and I can recommend it very warmly.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Alan Bennett - Keeping On Keeping On

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant as always

This is, of course, excellent.  Alan Bennett writes, as always, with wit, insight, honesty and a rage against injustice and fakery which gives this collection the same brilliance as Writing Home and Untold Stories.

Again consisting of ten years of diaries plus some longer writings, there are very interesting thoughts on some major events, as well as Bennett's intelligent and often very funny observations on everyday life.  There is real social comment here (his fury at police shootings is a regular theme, for example), leavened by the sort of Bennetry which makes me laugh out loud.  Two small examples:  having heard a critic on the radio say that he can have too much of Alan Bennett, his response is, "I wonder how he thinks I feel."  And, after an angry couple of paragraphs about the fatuous infantilisation and Americanisation of the Speaking Clock, "One tries not to be an Old Git but they don't make it easy."

Probably all that need be said about Keeping On Keeping On is that it's Alan Bennett and that he hasn't lost any of his ability.  I loved it; it made me think, it made me laugh and it gave me hope that there remains some civilization and humanity in the world.  Very warmly recommended.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Celeste Ng - Little Fires Everywhere

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Well done, but not brilliant

I would have expected to enjoy Little Fires Everywhere more than I actually did.  It's well written, the characters are realistically drawn and there's a decent story here, but something just didn’t quite chime with me as it should.

The story itself is a little complex, but this is a book about unaware privilege assuming that its vision of a good life is the only correct one and trying to mould and control everything in the world to conform to that vision, and also about mother-daughter relationships.  In brief, an impoverished, artistic, nomadic single mother, Mia, and her daughter Pearl arrive in a comfortable, privileged suburb of Cleveland in 1998 and their lives become entangled with the Richardsons, a long-established, wealthy family there.  The friendships and conflicts which ensue throw light on class in the USA and on what a fulfilled life may mean.

Celeste Ng writes very well.  Her prose is elegant and very readable, and her characters, especially Mia and Mrs. Richardson, are well drawn and convincing, but I found the book as a whole a little unsatisfactory.  I can't quite put my finger on exactly why, but I think it is a combination of small factors: the ground Ng covers is pretty well trodden and I'm not sure that I found any major new insights here, there are some long, rather plodding backstories which dragged somewhat, there is at least one colossal coincidence too many for me, I think Ng tries to do rather too much and to present too many points of view for the story to retain sufficient focus, aspects of the ending didn't ring true to me…and so on.  There were quite a lot of things like this "…their beautiful ordered city, where everyone followed the rules and everything had to be beautiful and perfect on the outside, no matter what mess lay within," which were a pleasure to read, but made points which were very, very familiar.

That said, I found it easy to read, and there are some very nice character insights and one or two quite touching moments.  This, and the quality of the prose means that I've rounded 3.5-stars up to 4, but although others have found this brilliant, I can only give it a qualified recommendation.

Rene Denfeld - The Child Finder

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good involving book

I thought this was pretty good, but I did have some reservations about it.  I read it because I thought that Rene Denfeld's first book, The Enchanted, was simply brilliant; although I enjoyed The Child Finder overall, this isn't really in the same class.

Naomi Cottle finds missing children in the USA.  She works freelance and alone and has talent for locating children, dead or alive, even though they may have been missing for years and the police investigations have failed.  In The Child Finder, she is looking for Madison who disappeared from a family outing in a high, cold part of Oregon three years ago.  We also get a lot about Naomi's own internal turmoil, her backstory and her current emotional life. 

It's all decently done; Denfeld writes well and the story is quite involving, but it all had a somewhat familiar feel to me and is rather like a lot of private detective novels in structure and feel.  The two cases sit rather uncomfortably together, some of the psychology seemed a bit iffy to me and I found the ending, following a good but slightly predictable climax, rather over-sentimental and a little implausible.  Nonetheless, there's plenty that's good about it and I found it quite a gripping and enjoyable read.

It's not clear whether this is the start of a series, but whatever Rene Denfeld chooses to write next, I'll read it.  Despite some reservations, I can recommend The Child Finder as a well written and readable book. 

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)