John McEwen
THE Memoirs of Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun, translated by Sian Evans (Camden Press, £15.95). The first unabridged version in English by that great rarity, an artist who had an eventful life. The bicentennial insights are as sharp as any. The consider- ate Marie Antoinette comes out of it very well, the painter David, currently the subject of the climactic exhibition at the Louvre, very badly. 'I could never for- give... his atrocious conduct in the Terror: he exercised a cowardly persecution against a large number of artists, including Robert, whom he had arrested and thrown into prison with a cruelty that touched on barbarity.'
Hokusai by Richard Lane (Barrie & Jenkins, £40). A very readable book about a great artist with a typically uneventful life. Lane successfully bridges the cultural gap between west and east, not least by his masterly use of footnotes.
A Little Stranger by Candia McWilliam (Bloomsbury, £12.95). A second novel undimmed by the success of her first, the Betty Trask Award-winning A Case of Knives. The poetic accuracy of her descrip- tion makes this country-house tale perpet- ually vital as well as authentically up-to- date.
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