Exciting times in reader-reviewing. This week I've spotted a review in verse. Yes! A review in the form of a sonnet – Shakespearean to be precise – four quatrains and a couplet. The book under consideration deals with the events of 1536 – a year chiefly notable for containing within it the execution of Anne Boleyn – which does, of course, make the choice of the Shakespearean sonnet slightly anachronistic (the great man wouldn't make his appearance on the world stage for another three decades). But here on the reader reviews roundup, we feel such petty quibbling to be beneath us. Simon92 has done us the great courtesy of distilling Hilary Mantel's superlative (in my own and in AggieH's opinion) Bring Up the Bodies into 14 lines of verse, and who are we to nitpick? It's pretty neat too; I particularly like "women lent/ The wrecking force of Luther's torching hand" – and I concur with his conclusion. Here it is, reproduced in full:
"So let us speak of the matter of England,
As Monmouth, Blake, Milton, of Lud
& Albion, Offa, Ecbert, & Edmund,
& Henry's reckoning of its end
In Mantel's Cromwell's version, which contends
A plague of new women to torment
Our most modern monarch, women lent
The wrecking force of Luther's torching hand,
European flame, as in the initial volume,
A centresidepiece. This second not a sequel,
A continuation rather, marked once more
In range, on clothing, feeding, jousting, consumed
In knowledge humanly staged, a universal
& a new giant Genius of English soul."
Next up, tenuousfives is back with a review of Richard Yates' Revoutionary Road, which I include for reasons threefold: firstly, it's a book among books, a joy, a jewel; secondly, because his review is very well turned (I was especially taken with the arresting description of Yates's protagonist couple "bump[ing] along like ice cubes in a pitcher of Martinis"); thirdly because it locates itself within a wider conversation about American literature that's been going on on the books site over the past couple of weeks. Tenuousfives' reading of the novel was bookended, he says, by a piece on John Updike by – ahem! – me, and a piece on Jonathan Franzen, by, erm, Jonathan Franzen. This review functions as the third corner of the triangle, uniting the earlier two pieces – exactly the kind of wider conversation which we had in mind back in 2011. Thanks!
And finally, in this our week of jubilee, a bit of rigour to offset the syrupy celebrations: AJNorth's review of Jacob Bronowski's book-of-the-TV-series, The Ascent of Man. "Anyone with even a passing interest in the history of our species and its place amongst the stars, or of science in general, will be astonished, delighted, deeply moved and profoundly affected," says AJ. Sounds like just what's needed this weekend: I recommend review, book and sentiment as one.
And that's all we've got time for today, folks. I'm off next week, so mail richard.lea@guardian.co.uk and he'll do the honours. Happy weekends!
