About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Al Pacino
Positive iNews (UK) Although the memoir ends with memories of family and friends, it’s clear it’s his films he wants most to be remembered by. This is a book less about a man than an actor through and through.
Curtis Sittenfeld
Rave iNews (UK) \"Does Sittenfeld deliver? Yes, she most certainly does – as you’d expect from the author of boarding school novel Prep, revered as she is for her ability to take genres predisposed to cliché and transform them into something original. Romantic Comedy succeeds because its two leads, an ordinary woman and a superstar man, are fully-formed creatures ... It’s not Sittenfeld’s first rodeo when it comes to rom coms. She rewrote Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as a book called Eligible in 2016, and she brings the same arch sensibilities, fun and delightfully detailed, cool, clear prose to this love affair.\
Rob Delaney
Rave iNews (UK) What a relief it is that the memoir of Rob Delaney is excellent: tender, perceptive and strangely, darkly funny amid unconscionable tragedy...I’m not sure how I’d have reviewed the writing down of such intimate grief had it not been good, but fortunately it is. Very ... Delaney’s heartache is visceral and violent ... There were often moments reading this book when I had to look away and cry. But Delaney is acutely aware that this will be the case ... there is such radical honesty that this book will be a comfort to anyone experiencing emotions they worry are somehow inappropriate in the face of grief ... This is a rallying call against the polite timidity that we often show grief. It is a howl into the dark. But this is also a story of immense love. The affection and support Delaney shares with his wife and sons, as they live between hospitals and from MRI to MRI, is wonderful to read about.
Meg Howrey
Positive iNews (UK) ... a different kind of ballet page-turner, more elegant family drama than straight thriller ... The book is filled with painful and astute self-reflections ... This is an original look both at the world of ballet – the directors, the demands, the devotion – and the art form itself ... The novel is at its best when dealing with the nature of muses and art, but falters when it comes to its central theme: betrayal. It skips around a little too readily between the past and the present, between lengthy (and occasionally pretentious) deep dives into niche dance topics and self-conscious musings...When we finally arrive at the big reveal, the neglectful nature of both her parents (and stepfather James) seems so clear that the blunder for which her father estranges her seems wildly out of proportion. The pages Carlisle devotes to self-doubt and self-recrimination for her part in the mess do not feel earned ... What the book is very good on is atmosphere, and Howrey paints a vivid picture of 80s New York and the Aids crisis ... a deeply felt (late) coming of age tale about purpose and love.
Jonathan Coe
Rave The Spectator (UK) Coe’s new book is...a comfortingly nostalgic coming-of-age novel, or rather, a coming-of-old-age novel, probing the twilight years of a Hollywood great ... Coe funnels his own wry humour through Wilder’s dialogue. Wilder cuts a tragic yet amusing figure ... The book’s easy affection for Wilder is a lovely thing. Even as Coe mocks his subjects it is always with warmth, not derision. It is natural for things to change, and yet still sad when they do. This is a charming, bittersweet book, and a perfect reminder of art’s value in stark times.
Taylor Jenkins Reid
Rave iNews (UK) My first thought picking up this book was, naturally, whether people who don’t know much about tennis will want to read it, but the answer is absolutely yes. Reid does ask the reader to spend a lot of time on the courts ... But Reid is so good at underscoring that with clear characterisation and urgent storytelling that the sports stuff never feels overbearing, or even particularly sporty, just high stakes. It’s not the tennis we care about, but Carrie herself, which is quite a feat given that she is painted as the least likeable sports person ever ... Reid examines misogyny in the sport and the cost of ambition, while her characteristic lively style keeps the writing light and propulsive even when the themes are heavy ... This is some of Reid’s best writing: focused, colourful and compassionate. The question is not whether Carrie can win, but whether she can ever be happy.
Judith Flanders
Rave iNews Flanders has a remarkable capacity to see nothing as inevitable. Even as she sifts meticulously through millennia of historical artefacts, Flanders asks the kind of rudimentary questions usually proposed only by small children: but why do we organise things A, B, C? Why not differently? ... Flanders retains a sense of fun ... Flanders finds contemporary resonance in humanity’s search for order.
Joanna Briscoe
Positive The Spectator (UK) The author has a fine eye for aesthetic detail and an even finer one for parental relationships. The star of the show is not actually Beth’s love life, but her heart-breaking attempts to revive her relationship with her daughter ... The illicitness of the strictly forbidden therapist-patient relationship appeals to Beth’s hunger for middle-aged thrills. But Bywater transforms from a buttoned-up professional with a gentle nature to an inconstant suitor who toys with Beth’s affections. I found the evolution a little abrupt and Beth’s willingness to risk all for someone so questionable increasingly hard to swallow ... What fascinated me far more was Beth’s relationship with Fern ... The setting may be bourgeois but the beautifully observed familial pains are universal.
Zadie Smith
Positive The Spectator (UK) Zadie Smith’s first collection of short stories shows that she can pack all the astute social commentary of her novels just as deftly into the short form ... Smith explores racism, sexism and class with a light touch ... Across 19 stories, set between Smith’s two hometowns of London and New York, women take centre stage. Men are always leaving them to raise children alone, or obstructing their potential when they stay ... Politics, too, comes under Smith’s blistering gaze ... Some stories are just a few pages, and several...are wildly experimental. Multiple points of view, sometimes, leave characters flailing about in search of a plot. But even when Smith doesn’t quite succeed, her efforts to push the boundaries are tremendous ... This bold and tender book leaves us with the feeling that Smith, like her characters, is still searching for her own identity.
Clare Clark
Mixed The Times (UK) It’s a fascinating tale, although the characters’ artifice can feel more enticing than the forgery case ... The art world is richly drawn and its atmosphere pervades the novel ... Throughout the novel, we have been given sinister snippets of rising nationalistic fervour, so that the third act feels heavy-handed, only there to tell us something we know already. When Frank delivers the big reveal, it’s a little underwhelming. No matter, though; the most enjoyable mystery here is the matter of whether anyone is really their authentic self.
Téa Obreht
Positive The Spectator (UK) Téa Obreht’s second novel is an expansive and ambitious subversion of Western tropes ... If Inland has a flaw it is that the two narrative strands do not tie together as satisfyingly as one would hope. Separate until the 11th hour, their collision falls a little flat, considering the odyssey we have been on. A book with so much plot ought to end with more of it. Yet there is so much to admire and enjoy here: the interplay of magic and reason, the threats of progress, the tribalism of a nation forming. Above all, the difficulty of simply living alongside one another, evoked in Obreht’s masterful language, variously lyrical, hilarious and profound.