Book reviews roundup

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan, Mortality by Christopher Hitchens and Henrietta Garnett's Wives and Stunners

Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth was greeted with enthusiasm by Peter Kemp in the Sunday Times ("this acute, witty novel is a winningly cunning addition to McEwan's fictional surveys of intelligence"), but Amanda Craig in the Independent on Sunday was more ambivalent: "Excursions into the metafictional cause Sweet Tooth to become arch in a way which may irritate many readers … its smooth prose and slippery intelligence sliding down like cream. Yet one feels at the end that it is the prelude for a film script … its final question a foregone conclusion." Ion Trewin in the Sunday Express contented himself with a description of the plot, and "What an unexpected twist from Ian McEwan!" while Catherine Taylor in the Sunday Telegraph enjoyed the ride but felt that the end was "too long in arriving, arch as it is. Disappointingly, McEwan's customary 'wilful narrative sadism' is largely missing".

Alexander Linklater in the Observer wrote of Christopher Hitchens's collection Mortality that "It would not be right to suggest that these are among the finest essays that Hitchens produced. The duress under which they were written renders them sparer and less fluent than he was at his best. But they are his most honest." Lynn Barber in the Sunday Times commented that "Hitchens was a truly great writer, but Mortality is not a great book", but that is because "Death does not become him … He always had a fear of self-indulgence … His fierce and fearless rationalism – so cherishable in other contexts – somehow doesn't work with death." In the Mail on Sunday Craig Brown enjoyed the way Hitchens "brings the same gleeful relish to attacking death as he once did to attacking Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa, George Galloway, or any of his vast pantheon of villains," and ended with: "If it turns out, contrary to his expectations, that God is alive and well, I dread to think what an argumentative place Heaven must have become. If I were God, I'd be making myself scarce."

Lesley McDowell in the Independent on Sunday felt that Henrietta Garnett has missed a trick in Wives and Stunners: The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Muses, as she is "so well placed to understand them. And yet she seems reluctant to trust her own background or instincts here … Consistency in group biographies is essential but tricky to maintain … Garnett has some very juicy material at her fingertips, but there is little new for the reader to discover." Miranda Seymour in the Sunday Times began more appreciatively, as the book's subject matter "although hardly unfamiliar, never fails to grip". But "what Garnett possesses in spades – exuberance, a fondness for recondite detail, opinions on everything … she lacks in other, more important respects. I can live with the unattributed quotations, random snatches of verse, a lamentable index … I do, however, wish she had checked her facts." Duncan Fallowell in the Daily Express allowed that "Garnett's meandering book contributes minor details" but added that neither Georgiana Burne-Jones nor Effie Grey "were really muses".

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Book reviews roundup
As Good As God, As Clever As the Devil by Rodney Bolt, Emperor of Lies by Steve Sem-Sandberg and Memoirs by William Rees-Mogg

15, Jul, 2011 @9:55 PM

Critical eye – book reviews roundup
Zoo Time by Howard Jacobson, Unapologetic by Francis Spufford and The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

14, Sep, 2012 @9:48 PM

Critical eye: book reviews roundup
Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton, Jack Holmes and His Friend by Edmund White and The Obamas by Jodi Kantor

27, Jan, 2012 @10:54 PM

Critical eye: book reviews roundup
Titian: His Life by Sheila Hale, Mr Churchill's Profession by Peter Clarke and The House of Rumour by Jake Arnott

27, Jul, 2012 @9:47 PM

Critical eye: book reviews roundup
In Search of a Masterpiece by Christopher Lloyd, Lucky Break by Esther Freud and To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild

20, May, 2011 @11:05 PM

Critical eye: book reviews roundup
Out of the Ashes by David Lammy, The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco and Outsiders by Brian Sewell

16, Dec, 2011 @10:47 PM

Critical eye: book reviews roundup

Outsider II by Brian Sewell, Ian Rankin's Standing in Another Man's Grave and Totall Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger

09, Nov, 2012 @10:55 PM

Critical eye: book reviews roundup
Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie and A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks

28, Sep, 2012 @9:55 PM

Article image
Book reviews roundup: Updike, Orfeo and The Valley
What the critics thought of Updike by Adam Begley, Orfeo by Richard Powers and The Valley by Richard Benson

25, Apr, 2014 @6:30 PM

Article image
Book reviews roundup: My Autobiography, Sense & Sensibility, Her Brilliant Career
What the critics thought of My Autobiography by Alex Ferguson, Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope and Her Brilliant Career by Rachel Cooke

01, Nov, 2013 @5:00 PM