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Recent Reviews
Casey Cep
Positive The Times It is to the credit of Casey Cep, a writer for The New Yorker and The New York Times, that she has pulled this extraordinary story together. Furious Hours is, in effect, three books ... It is not until halfway through the book that we get to Lee’s involvement with the Maxwell/Radney case, and the threads come together. This chronology seems risky, but the wait is worthwhile. With its rich cast of characters, the polar opposite settings of New York and rural Alabama, Cep’s dark humour and painstaking research, there is a great deal to enjoy. If I have one criticism, it is that dropping a detailed history of the life insurance industry on us in chapter three tests a reader’s commitment, but this was a minor hiccup in a rich and rewarding read.
Robin Green
Positive The Times As Robin Green, then the only female writer on the magazine, says in this colorful autobiography, it felt like \'the heartbeat of the most happening thing on the planet\' ... On the work front, Green specialized in the waspish debunking of celebrity vanities. After the teenybop idol David Cassidy unwisely expressed a desire to appear in Rolling Stone, she and Leibovitz persuaded him to pose naked for the cover. The ensuing pubic hair horror caused a mass withdrawal of his sponsorship and advertising deals ... There was great music, it was good to be young, and you could only feel sorry for the people who came after, who would never get to live that life.
Vesna Goldsworthy
Positive The Times Monsieur Ka is more than a sophisticated \'what happened next?\' exercise. Goldsworthy is an elegant writer, skilful at building atmosphere. Her fiction-within-fiction device is clever and intriguing ... Not all the threads of the story are satisfactorily wound up, but between its setting of relentless winter and the intrigues of exiled Russians, the novel could hardly seem more of the moment.
Lynne Murphy
Mixed The Times Murphy ranges far and wide, with much wonderful detail and colour. She is particularly good on sport, manners, class and death, and her observations on food are fascinating ... As a writer you have a problem when you set out to debunk a myth that is fondly subscribed to by the kind of people who might want to read a book on your subject. The problem is to avoid leaving not only the myth, but also your readers, feeling debunked, battered and abused. You need to convey that those people over there are idiots because they believe x, y, z, but that you and I are cleverer than them. I’m not sure that in this the author succeeds. One final thing. The publisher describes this book as \'laugh out loud\' and, while finding it entertaining, I can’t say I did. Perhaps humour is the subject for another book.