Christmas Books II
Books of the Year
A further selection of the best and worst books of the year, chosen by our regular contributors Jane Gardam
I didn't feel rapture for any novel I have read this year but I can't get out of my head The Long Afternoon by Giles Water- field (Headline Review, £14.99). Hardly a novel, somewhat amateur, it can't quite decide whether it is narrative or family album; but it is written with intensity. Raj Edwardian couple decide to preserve their bliss in the south of France, come what may. What comes is the first world war, through which they live. dreamily on until World War II sweeps them away. Their determined, sensational finale is close to Greek tragedy. Also Anita Desai's short stories, Diamond Dust (Chatto, £14.99), are immaculate, serious, funny, intercontinen- tal. A flawless writer.
Wordsworth: A Life by Juliet Barker (Viking, £25) is the best biography I have read in a long time: over 800 pages of well- researched high entertainment. In Peter Ackroyd's London (Chatto, £25) he is at his learned, eccentric best, writing (volumi- nously) on his beloved.
The book I've found most rewarding to review this year has been Theide and d'Ancona's The Quest for the True Cross (Weidenfeld, £18.99) about St Helena. Now that the Piero della Francesca fres- coes are at last restored in Arezzo, this book is essential reading for the queuing multitudes. It's about the fourth-century Queen Mother who at over 70 set out across the Middle East in search of Christ's cross to become one of the founders of Christian Europe. Message: 'Not all relics need be fakes.' She was possibly the daugh- ter of Old King Cole and born at Colch- ester.
Lastly, Penelope Fitzgerald's short stories The Means of Escape (Flamingo, £12.99) — a collection which seems to me to be far ahead of any fiction being written today.
Previous page
