Francis King
Best and worst? It is easier to list the books that I am most likely to remember and those that I should most want to forget. In the first of these categories:
1) A Cruel Madness by Colin Thubron. Admirable both for the depth of its emo- tion and for the total security of its narrative technique, this novel about in- sanity continues to haunt me.
2) Secrets of a Woman's Heart: The Later Life of I. Compton-Burnett 1920-1969, by Hilary Spurling. It was a tour de force to produce so absorbing a narrative of a half-century in which the subject did little more than give tea-parties, compare the prices in shops and write one masterpiece after another.
In the second of these categories:
1) Parachutes and Kisses by Erica Jong. Miss Jong stands in the same relationship to sex as Colonel Saunders to chicken — once she has dished it up for you, you lose your appetite for it.
2) The Official Foodie Guide by Anne Barr and Paul Levy. Perhaps I am being priggish about what might be regarded as nothing worse than an innocuous essay in snob- bery; but it was by an unfortunate con- catenation of circumstances that, within three days, I watched the news of famine in Ethiopia, heard the authors burbling about their book on a phone-in, and picked up the book in the house of a friend.
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