Books of the year
A selection of the best and worst books of the year chosen by some of the Spectator's regular reviewers.
Peregrine Worsthorne
The book I most admired was Kingsley Amis's Stanley and the Women, the excell- ence of which can be appreciated even by — perhaps particularly by — those, like myself, who have little sympathy with saloon-bar-type mysogynism. For Stanley's mysogynism is enormously and marvel- lously more complicated and subtle than the ordinary male chauvinist variety and, in the circumstances of this novel, wholly authentic. But what makes this novel truly remarkable is not so much the story of how Stanley grew to hate women as how he grew to love his mad son, the savage satire of the one theme only serving to make the other that much more moving and tender. Another book I much admired was the 1984 Corgi edition of Stephen Vizinczey's An Innocent Millionaire. Not only is it immensely gripping to read, but at the end one feels purged and uplifted as if by some kind of moral revelation. The book I least liked, and did not complete, was George Will's pretentious political study of Amer- ican politics — Statecraft is Soulcraft. What cheek for President Reagan's • favourite columnist and most eloquent champion to write a book with such a title!
Previous page
