The
Week in Review 25th February 2019
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The
Uninhabitable Earth finds itself at home among reviewers
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Good morning Graham,
It seems fitting that over a February weekend where
the mercury hit 17 degrees, David Wallace-Wells' The
Uninhabitable Earth struck fear into the hearts of critics.
Simon Ings in the Daily Telegraph stated, "This book
may come to be regarded as the last truly great climate assessment
ever made. (Is there even time left to pen another?)" In the Sunday
Times, Bryan Appleyard declared it "relentless, angry
journalism of the highest order. Read it and, for the lack of
any more useful response, weep."
Though the title was feted by reviewers for its
importance, few of them seemed to enjoy the "bracing" title
(which is, of course, the point)—David George Haskell in the Guardian
wrote that it was "designed to startle and shake us"
and Julian Glover in the Evening Standard stated it was
"by turns alarming, terrifying, and just downright
bleak".
Tana French's The
Wych Elm, the crime author's first standalone title, drew
widespread praise from reviewers, with Anna Carey in the Irish
Times declaring French "one of this country's very best
novelists" and Stephen King (yes, that Stephen
King) in the New York Times compared her to Thomas Hardy,
adding, "Her work—never dull to begin with—has gained a certain
lively freshness," in stepping away from her Dublin Murder Squad
series. In the Guardian, Stephanie Merritt wrote that while "the
narrative is slower" than in French's procedural novels,
"the rewards are greater; the big questions linger in the mind
long after the superficial ones are resolved".
The Bookseller's
non-fiction previewer Caroline Sanderson crowned David Nott's War
Doctor as her Book of the Month for February, and the rest of
the critics have jumped on the bandwagon—with Christopher Hart in the
Sunday Times describing it as "one of the most brutally
vivid evocations of modern warfare that you will read" and Fiona
Sturges in the Guardian praised it as
"breathtaking", adding, "If a film about his life
isn't already in developement, someone's missing a trick."
Oscars 2020, anyone?
By Kiera O'Brien, charts editor, The Bookseller
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The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the
Future
David Wallace-Wells
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"This bracing account of the
many predictions and uncertainties around climate change is designed
to startle and shake us"
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The Guardian
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"There’s little to be optimistic
about in this account of the effects of climate change"
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Evening Standard
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"This book may come to be
regarded as the last truly great climate assessment ever made. "
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The Daily
Telegraph
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"Wallace-Wells is an extremely
adept storyteller, simultaneously urgent and humane despite the
technical difficulty of his subject"
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Sleeping with Strangers
David Thomson
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"Thomson’s criticism (is) the most ingenious and
imaginative writing about film "
The Guardian
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"opens with an image so disturbing it lingers for
days"
The Observer
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Moneyland
Oliver Bullough
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"(an) impassioned but at times specious
book"
London Review of Books
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The Letters of Oliver Goldsmith
Michael Griffin, David
O'Shaughnessy
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"The editors hope to ‘reorient’ discussion of his
life and works with this volume"
London Review of Books
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"Bower never really unpicks precisely why so many
people, despite everything, continue to support such a joyless,
limited and dogmatic man."
The Sunday Times
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In the Closet of the Vatican
Frederic Martel, Shaun
Whiteside
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"Sexual hypocrisy is rife in the church and
inside the Vatican, claims this new book"
The Sunday Times
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"The stupendous conclusion to Don Winslow’s
drug-war trilogy"
The Sunday Times
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Making Evil
Dr Julia Shaw
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"warmly, chattily written"
The Guardian
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To Kill the Truth
Sam Bourne
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"The Trump-inflected thriller goes out of its way
to hammer its message home"
Financial Times
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"opens with an image so disturbing it lingers for
days"
The Observer
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Optic Nerve
Maria Gainza, Thomas
Bunstead
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"quietly revelatory"
The Sunday Times
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Late in the Day
Tessa Hadley
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"Her particular strength is to combine a deep
excavation of human frailty with compassion for its effects"
The Guardian
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We Must Be Brave
Frances Liardet
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"creates a rich portrait of country life before
and during the war"
The Times
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When I Had A Little Sister
Catherine Simpson
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"a considerable achievement"
The Times
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Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist
Elizabeth Goldring
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"A superb new biography of Nicholas Hilliard
vividly recounts the life and times of Elizabeth I’s favourite
portrait painter"
Evening Standard
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The Photographer at Sixteen
George Szirtes
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"In an unflinching memoir, George Szirtes
describes his mother’s bitter despair on finding that all her family
had perished"
The Spectator
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The Border
Diarmaid Ferriter
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"A timely history... richly detailed"
The Observer
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Seven Signs of Life
Aoife Abbey
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"Aoife Abbey gives voice to the complexity of
what it means to be a human being"
Irish Times
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"Becoming is refined and forthright, gracefully
written and at times laugh-out-loud funny"
The New York Times
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Normal People
Sally Rooney
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"Rooney’s style is pure poetry, sparse and
heartbreaking, and writing this three months after I finished it I
find my chest still aches"
Evening Standard
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"a high-voltage stream of unhinged, raconteur
lyricism"
Daily Mail
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Killing Commendatore
Haruki Murakami
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"The complex landscape that Murakami assembles
in Killing Commendatore is a word portrait of the artist’s
inner life."
The New York Times
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"beautifully unresolved"
The Scotsman
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Black Leopard, Red Wolf
Marlon James
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"A Booker winner’s radical new novel takes us to
Iron Age Africa"
The Sunday Times
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