PositiveThe Times (UK)More convincing than the science... are the case studies Keltner uses to argue that it is awe, more than any other emotion, that makes us truly happy ... What Keltner fails to acknowledge is that bringing people together is not always a good thing. In fact it can be sinister ... His otherwise fascinating and enjoyable book would have been strengthened by directly confronting the dark side of awe.
Zora Neale Hurston, Ed. by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Genevieve West
RaveThe Financial Times (UK)... a new collection of Hurston’s essays demonstrates once again how ill suited she was to the role of a solemn and respectable author, the matriarch of black American fiction. In these essays, which cover themes of race, gender and politics, her writing is characterised by an impish relish that remains both shocking and invigorating today ... These opinions can be shocking to modern readers, accustomed as we are now to a more heightened sensitivity to racial prejudice ... She was certainly witty, convivial and a great phrasemaker. But even these qualities do not make her scepticism about racial integration easy to digest ... This new collection shows that Hurston’s essays also deserve great acclaim. She was an iconoclast on matters of race, but this came out of a reverence for black dignity.
Bernardine Evaristo
PositiveThe Sunday Times (UK)One of the most charming aspects of the book is that [Evaristo] starts every chapter with Old English, Yoruba, Irish, German and Portuguese translations of the chapter number — the languages her ancestors spoke ... the most striking feature of this moving and enjoyable book is her fearless openness in the face of these struggles.
Michaela Coel
MixedThe Evening Standard (UK)The vagaries of displacement and erasure evident in her work can be seen here - her immediate low-income environment enmeshed within the financial centre of Britain ... After closing the book, I found myself thinking: what is the point of this book? You can find Coel’s original lecture on YouTube - and it is captivating, funny, and moving, expertly told in Coel’s richly wise voice. It is a lecture which, at times, has the frisson of a dramatic performance. This book adds nothing worthwhile. There are no new revelations, no deeper reflections ... If Coel used the lecture as a springboard for a fully-fleshed memoir, that would have been more promising. Her life is sufficiently interesting to warrant one. She briefly describes what it was like to grow up as a child of an immigrant Ghanaian mother who worked on weekends whilst studying during the week; but she doesn’t stop and turn it over. We see only glimpses of Coel’s schooling, career, and life ... She emphasises the importance of transparency in the creative industries, yet she doesn’t tell us that the Drama school she attended was Guildhall, or that the company that offered her $1 million dollars in exchange for copyright ownership over I May Destroy You was Netflix - facts which are not particularly sensitive ... Of course, no one should be obliged to disclose anything. And the length of a text is not the measure of its quality. Although Coel wants greater transparency in creative industries, she states in the introduction of this book that when she was writing the lecture she was not aiming for transparency ... But translating a one-hour lecture into a book is nevertheless disappointing. Her lecture works on the screen; as a book it is too flighty. The example of the moth that Coel brings up in her introduction is instructive on the book as a whole. Like a moth, the book flits from point to point in a way that doesn’t justify itself. It instead provokes one to ask: what is at stake here? Why am I reading this? Watch the lecture instead.
Frances Wilson
PositiveEvening Standard (UK)Wilson is a sympathetic but not uncritical reader of Lawrence’s texts. And her pen is exquisitely cutting ... Wilson often tries to distinguish between a Self One and a Self Two in Lawrence’s character. But this tendency to break him down risks overlooking another thing clear from Wilson’s biography: that Lawrence was a great synthesiser ... I would also quibble with Wilson’s assertion, near the end of her biography, that after Kate Millett’s assessment of Lawrence fifty years ago, he was \'dropped off university lists and was thrown into the Inferno where he has remained ever since\'. This is an overgeneralisation ... Nevertheless, Burning Man is an elegantly written, intelligent, and very witty account of one of the most consequential writers of the last century. Wilson skilfully examines Lawrence’s rage, impotence, silliness, and genius.
Blake Bailey
RaveThe Evening Standard (UK)... a fascinating account of a writing career that produced 31 books ... Bailey’s utterly engrossing biography shows Roth led a life just as strange and intense as his fictionalised alter egos.
Yaa Gyasi
RaveThe Times (UK)Gyasi’s prose is often characterised by methodical language mixed with a tone of paralysing despair ... The novel is suspended by this tension between the desire to know and the recognition that human behaviour cannot be fully explained by formulas. There is a risk in novels that use scientific themes and language that they become emotionally sterile. This is not the case with Transcendent Kingdom. Nana’s self-destruction is affecting to read. Their mother’s brusque attitude to the family and wider society is funny, especially to those familiar with older west African women. And the friendship between Gifty and her fellow scientist Katherine is depicted with genuine tenderness. This novel is an unflinching account of loss, but it is also a moving tribute to the ability of the human spirit to endure such tragedies.
Brandon Taylor
MixedThe Times (UK)Taylor describes the surrounding scenery with sharp focus. The prose is exact and clear; Taylor has a keen sensitivity for surface detail. Indeed, surface description and the visual gaze are important features of the narrative ... The white people in Real Life are ciphers rather than characters; this lack of subtlety in their characterisation is at odds with Taylor’s delicate and taut prose style. This is a problem because Wallace’s interaction with these characters is an important part of his estrangement. If they seem lifeless, this renders Wallace cold and sterile too. It is this that ultimately makes Real Life, despite the quality of the writing, a disappointment.
