Jake Kerridge
The Family McCosh
The Dust That Falls from Dreams
By Louis de Bernières
Harvill Secker 515pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
When I was an undergraduate at the turn of the millennium, there was no surer icebreaker with a girl than asking, ‘Have you read Captain Corelli’s Mandolin?’ Louis de Bernières’s thumpingly romantic novel set on occupied Cephalonia was well on its way to ubiquity even before it received the imprimatur of Hugh Grant’s character in Notting Hill.
But in the two decades since it was published, none of de Bernières’s subsequent books has captured the public imagination to anything like the same extent. Alan Bennett once suggested that Thomas Hardy’s novels were
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'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad
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In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency