Francis King
Love in Visiting Hours
TO SUMMARISE A plot in the space of a paragraph or two is all too often the hardest task that faces a reviewer, but in the case of Graham Swift’s latest novel that task is easy. To say so is in no way to disparage this accomplished work: after all, from Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Persuasion to Anna Karenina and The Wings of the Dove, some of the greatest novels have the simplest of plots.
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In 2017 Jan Morris, who died last week, wrote a paean to George Borrow's 'Wild Wales' – 'the most celebrated book written in English about Wales'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/stanzas-at-the-summit
'She drank a lot of wine and some of the great bottles she savoured are listed here. But her biggest appetite was for love, no doubt fuelled ... by the lack of it in her early childhood.'
Cressida Connolly reviews a new biography of Sybille Bedford.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-romantic-jigsaw
I have just spent a wonderful few minutes re-reading the best book review of the year in my opinion. It's by Piers Brendon in September's issue of @Lit_Review. Beautifully captioned as 'Jack the Lad', Brendon takes Fredrik Logevall's JFK: Vol.I apart! It's a laugh a minute. Ouch!