First up this week, ElizabethBaines' really elegant and compelling review of Sarah Hall's recent short story collection, The Beautiful Indifference. Writing in our reviews pages, Justine Jordan called Hall "a writer of extraordinary talents", and here ElizabethBaines registers her deep response to them. "Reading this book underlines for me what I really want from my reading, and makes me realise how seldom I get it," she says.
"I don't want to be simply entertained, diverted, informed or even satisfied, although all of these are good things to experience … what I really want is my deepest sense of the world confirmed and reignited, to feel raw yet healed with the truth of it, and buoyed with excitement. I want language so sharp and glittery and plump with that truth that the book is a taste, a texture on my tongue, a sensation in my gullet and gut. Above all, I want a pulse. This book had all of these things for me."
High praise, persuasively delivered; and Baines follows up with a review that thoughtfully dissects the collection's seven stories. Great stuff.
Next, I wanted to highlight an enjoyable burgeoning trend: reviews written partially in response to earlier readers' considerations. Back in October, stpauli gave his verdict on The Black House by Peter May, a crime novel set on the Scottish Isle of Lewis. Stpauli was seduced by May's descriptions of the landscape ("extremely well-observed and atmospheric") but felt in the end that the novel "just didn't quite deliver … character development that might have been convincing on screen, portrayed with the right acting and direction" - May began his career in television - "is simply too fast and too jarring here". It's a smart piece of criticism, and far from hostile, but it might well have dissuaded vacillating readers from picking up a copy. Here, though, seven months later, is Cathymacleod, responding to the book with straight-up enthusiasm, praising May's "unusual structure, which gave me both surprise and delight" and concluding "what a welcome difference to the police procedurals that cram bookshop shelves … this opener is five stars for me." As the doctors say, always worth getting a second opinion; interested parties are now in a better position to judge for themselves.
In our second pair, we see not shades of difference but outright issue-taking. On May 4, EKareno delivered a scathing analysis of Jack Kerouac's On the Road ("Kerouac's book has the tediousness of people who think they are interesting and witty when really they are off their faces … Sal displays neither passion nor self-reflection. He lacks both personality and spine … Why is this book so big? What has made this inconclusive drivel into a cult text?"). And on May 14, RabBurnout offered a rattling riposte. "EKareno's review is pretty jaundiced, I feel, and seems coloured by his moral indignation at the character's behaviour," he begins, going on to highlight all that's worth having in the book: the "exuberant stream of consciousness, imbued with a poetic descriptiveness and visceral immediacy, with the rhythm and improvisation of the jazz which inspired it"; the "vivid" descriptions of America, "the vastness of it, the road going on forever to the unreachable horizon"; the "emotionally candid nature of K's writing - the confessional nature of his and Ginsberg's work, that was so influential upon American literature and culture". On balance, I'm probably with EKareno on this one, but it's enriching to see both views sitting side by side; the two lanes of the interstate, covering the same territory but heading in opposite directions.
If we've mentioned your review this week, drop me a line on sarah.crown@guardian.co.uk and I'll send you a treat from the cupboards. And on that note, tenuousfive - apologies! Must have missed your firrst mail; your book is on its way now. Have good weekends, everybody.
