About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Ed Simon
Mixed The Telegraph (UK) One might wish for it to be expressed through slightly less heated rhetoric and a more limited focus ... Scholarly and impassioned if sometimes hysterical.
Judi Dench, Brendan O'Hea
Rave The Telegraph (UK) Utterly delightful ... Alongside all this fresh and subtle commentary comes an unstoppable stream of anecdotes, recollections and asides.
Clare Carlisle
Positive The Telegraph (UK) Perceptive and suggestive ... There are broader issues it doesn’t address, and it’s frustrating that... Carlisle refuses to speculate as to whether Eliot physically consummated her love for either of her husbands ... Yet Carlisle has produced a richly considered study that brings one close to the heart and mind of a great writer and a wise soul.
Tania Branigan
Positive The Telegraph (UK) \"Branigan doesn’t make clear whether she speaks any of the several Chinese languages or has instead relied on interpreters, but her book displays the virtues of first-hand experience: it’s built on the testimony of a wide range of ordinary citizens and a determination to see beyond the clichés and prejudices that hobble unmodulated ideological positions. She is as interested in the psychology of perpetrators as she is in that of the victims ... It’s hard to come away from Red Memory without a feeling that China is doomed to more of the same.\
Kate Andersen Brower
Pan The Telegraph (UK) None of this is exactly new: it has long been mythologised. Authorised by Taylor’s family, Andersen Brower has been granted access to letters and intimate records, but these yield incidental gossip rather than significant revelations. Nor is anything of critical interest said about the relevant movies, several of which are simply ignored. Brower’s showbiz prose style – too many clichés, too many vacuous quotes – doesn’t help either ... The book’s biggest flaw, however, is the maudlin sentimentality that colours the treatment of Taylor’s final year.
Katherine Rundell
Rave Daily Mail (UK) This isn’t some dry academic tome but a sharply animated and imaginative account of a remarkable figure ... Had Rundell wanted to, she could easily have moulded his story into a novel along the lines of Wolf Hall.
Julian Barnes
Rave The Telegraph (UK) Julian Barnes is up to his old tricks in his new book, and admirers of Flaubert\'s Parrot or A History of the World in 10½ Chapters will again be charmed by the dry wit and playful erudition in a slim volume that evades any tidy category of fact or fiction ... a delight, albeit one that may occasionally irritate and bewilder the literal-minded reader ... Where the book\'s originality lies is in the interweaving of Pozzi\'s life with a broader portrait of his milieu and specifically his remarkably extensive links with the literary élite of the belle époque era ... What a deliciously intelligent entertainment this is, couched in a prose of enviable suppleness.
Nadine Meisner
Rave The Spectator (UK) Nadine Meisner’s meticulously researched and exhaustively detailed study will surely establish itself as the standard authority on the subject in English. The absence of any scorching drama or scandal in Petipa’s life means that it doesn’t make electrifying reading, but its poise and scholarship impress, particularly in its command of the broader cultural context ... Meisner understandably feels sympathetic towards her subject, but the rest of us will find it hard to warm to him. Nobody ever said he was nice.