From Andrea Long Chu to Alayo Akinkugbe: new books reviewed in short
They say that if a friendship lasts seven years, it is likely to last a lifetime. How solid must a relationship be if it has lasted three decades? Amos and Emerson believe they share an unbreakable bond that saw them through their early twenties to their fifties: the wild days of college, first serious relationships and the births of their daughters. Not even their differing backgrounds could shake the foundations of their friendship. Or so they thought.
Emerson is a lawyer, Amos a psychiatrist, and they both pass their time in the comfort of New York City wealth. But their picture-perfect life is about to face a challenge not many relationships can survive as Emerson's 52nd birthday celebrations begin. Hal Ebbott's roman d'analyse-style debut resurfaces old rivalries and resentments, be it class, marriage or power. All the characters repeatedly strive for something real and emotive as if acutely aware of their daily artifice – and they experience that reality with a shocking act of violence and betrayal. Ebbott grants the readers an intimate insight into thoughts vs actions that will leave you questioning your oldest friendships.
Picador, 320pp, £18.99. Buy the book.
By Zuzanna Lachendro
Reframing Blackness: What's Black about 'History of Art'? by Alayo Akinkugbe
Are museums white spaces? Does the education system limit our exposure to black artists? Does feminist art completely disregard intersectionality? These are questions posed and answered by Alayo Akinkugbe in Reframing Blackness. Conceived in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, this book is a study of the cultural shift that followed his death, and focuses on the erasure of blackness from art history. Akinkugbe moves the subject of blackness in art from the periphery to centre frame.
Her criticism blends anecdote and academia, imploring the reader to consider the way we engage with art, skewed as it is by a Eurocentric perspective. Akinkugbe brings attention to art surrounding blackness that has been largely ignored while still acknowledging earlier criticism of these works. The book addresses the omissions in the history of art where blackness has been deliberately effaced. Ending with a call to action, Reframing Blackness is a manifesto to promote diversity and reform in the ways we think, educate and engage with art history.
Merky Books, 176pp, £20. Buy the book.
By Gabriella Berkeley-Agyepong
Authority: Essays on Being Right by Andrea Long Chu
Reviewing The Fraud in 2023, Andrea Long Chu wrote that Zadie Smith had lost her teeth. Chu's own Pulitzer Prize-winning work often tackles authors, TV shows, gender ideology, and even Andrew Lloyd Webber. To sum up Chu's style as 'takedowns' would be a disservice. Rather, it's a careful dismantling of revered cultural figures, the zeitgeist, and liberal society in general. Her writing is razor-sharp, personal, and vociferous in its proclamations, but it's also fun – it's got bite.
Authority is a collection of essays written between 2018 and 2024, including the breakout 'On Liking Women', which interrogates Chu's gender transition. Republished seven years later, it reminds us of how barbed this topic has become. Many of the pieces have been published – a large number in New York magazine, where Chu is a book critic. But there are two newly penned essays that act as a battle cry for criticism and a rally against the neutrality of 'the far centre' – a place where Chu feels art and politics languish without conviction. But take all this with a pinch of salt, for, as Chu writes, 'The critic may be witty or insightful or engaging or well-read or widely admired or a true virtuoso – but what she will never be is decidedly right.'
Hutchinson Heinemann, 288pp, £20. Buy the book.
By Catharine Hughes
The Place of Shells by Mai Ishizawa
How can someone be dead and yet present? That is the question Mai Ishizawa's protagonist, and the reader, ask themselves. In the middle of the pandemic in Göttingen, Germany, a young Japanese woman studying for her PhD is confronted with her past. When a friend who died in the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami unexpectedly shows up at the train station, he triggers a series of unexpected events: the appearance of mysterious guests, eerie objects showing up in the nearby forest, and time's threads unravelling.
But it's not just the protagonist who is forced to face her trauma. Flatmates, friends and neighbours turn to days gone by and begin to unpack the burdens they have been carrying, blending past and present. Ishizawa's poetic prose embraces art along with both Japanese and German culture, and her novel becomes a hypnotic dissection of memory, trauma and belonging that many will relate to. Though face masks make a regular appearance, the narrative comes across as timeless, perhaps because the story seems suspended in a timeline of its own. Did any of this happen? Or was it all just a manifestation of the grief many of us have experienced during times of global crisis?
Sceptre, 160pp, £16.99. Buy the book.
By Zuzanna Lachendro
[See also: 150 years of the bizarre Hans Christian Andersen]
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New Statesman
4 days ago
- New Statesman
From Andrea Long Chu to Alayo Akinkugbe: new books reviewed in short
Among Friends by Hal Ebbott They say that if a friendship lasts seven years, it is likely to last a lifetime. How solid must a relationship be if it has lasted three decades? Amos and Emerson believe they share an unbreakable bond that saw them through their early twenties to their fifties: the wild days of college, first serious relationships and the births of their daughters. Not even their differing backgrounds could shake the foundations of their friendship. Or so they thought. Emerson is a lawyer, Amos a psychiatrist, and they both pass their time in the comfort of New York City wealth. But their picture-perfect life is about to face a challenge not many relationships can survive as Emerson's 52nd birthday celebrations begin. Hal Ebbott's roman d'analyse-style debut resurfaces old rivalries and resentments, be it class, marriage or power. All the characters repeatedly strive for something real and emotive as if acutely aware of their daily artifice – and they experience that reality with a shocking act of violence and betrayal. Ebbott grants the readers an intimate insight into thoughts vs actions that will leave you questioning your oldest friendships. Picador, 320pp, £18.99. Buy the book. By Zuzanna Lachendro Reframing Blackness: What's Black about 'History of Art'? by Alayo Akinkugbe Are museums white spaces? Does the education system limit our exposure to black artists? Does feminist art completely disregard intersectionality? These are questions posed and answered by Alayo Akinkugbe in Reframing Blackness. Conceived in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, this book is a study of the cultural shift that followed his death, and focuses on the erasure of blackness from art history. Akinkugbe moves the subject of blackness in art from the periphery to centre frame. Her criticism blends anecdote and academia, imploring the reader to consider the way we engage with art, skewed as it is by a Eurocentric perspective. Akinkugbe brings attention to art surrounding blackness that has been largely ignored while still acknowledging earlier criticism of these works. The book addresses the omissions in the history of art where blackness has been deliberately effaced. Ending with a call to action, Reframing Blackness is a manifesto to promote diversity and reform in the ways we think, educate and engage with art history. Merky Books, 176pp, £20. Buy the book. By Gabriella Berkeley-Agyepong Authority: Essays on Being Right by Andrea Long Chu Reviewing The Fraud in 2023, Andrea Long Chu wrote that Zadie Smith had lost her teeth. Chu's own Pulitzer Prize-winning work often tackles authors, TV shows, gender ideology, and even Andrew Lloyd Webber. To sum up Chu's style as 'takedowns' would be a disservice. Rather, it's a careful dismantling of revered cultural figures, the zeitgeist, and liberal society in general. Her writing is razor-sharp, personal, and vociferous in its proclamations, but it's also fun – it's got bite. Authority is a collection of essays written between 2018 and 2024, including the breakout 'On Liking Women', which interrogates Chu's gender transition. Republished seven years later, it reminds us of how barbed this topic has become. Many of the pieces have been published – a large number in New York magazine, where Chu is a book critic. But there are two newly penned essays that act as a battle cry for criticism and a rally against the neutrality of 'the far centre' – a place where Chu feels art and politics languish without conviction. But take all this with a pinch of salt, for, as Chu writes, 'The critic may be witty or insightful or engaging or well-read or widely admired or a true virtuoso – but what she will never be is decidedly right.' Hutchinson Heinemann, 288pp, £20. Buy the book. By Catharine Hughes The Place of Shells by Mai Ishizawa How can someone be dead and yet present? That is the question Mai Ishizawa's protagonist, and the reader, ask themselves. In the middle of the pandemic in Göttingen, Germany, a young Japanese woman studying for her PhD is confronted with her past. When a friend who died in the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami unexpectedly shows up at the train station, he triggers a series of unexpected events: the appearance of mysterious guests, eerie objects showing up in the nearby forest, and time's threads unravelling. But it's not just the protagonist who is forced to face her trauma. Flatmates, friends and neighbours turn to days gone by and begin to unpack the burdens they have been carrying, blending past and present. Ishizawa's poetic prose embraces art along with both Japanese and German culture, and her novel becomes a hypnotic dissection of memory, trauma and belonging that many will relate to. Though face masks make a regular appearance, the narrative comes across as timeless, perhaps because the story seems suspended in a timeline of its own. Did any of this happen? Or was it all just a manifestation of the grief many of us have experienced during times of global crisis? Sceptre, 160pp, £16.99. Buy the book. By Zuzanna Lachendro [See also: 150 years of the bizarre Hans Christian Andersen] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
The Herald Scotland
20-07-2025
- The Herald Scotland
Fame, food, music, sex and sport: Best 10 memoirs to read this summer
Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, Frances Wilson, Bloomsbury, £25 Muriel Spark, that most mercurial of Scottish writers never made it easy for her biographers (she had her own official biography delayed by seven years and then dismissed the result as a 'hatchet job'). At the same time, though, her story is not short of incident. An unhappy marriage to a man prone to violent outbursts (it was when he tried to shoot her that she fled with their son), the abandonment of said son, a breakdown, a religious conversion; she made sure there was plenty of material. Wilson makes the most of it. British actor and comedian Peter Sellers (Image: free) The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Roger Lewis, Riverrun, £30 After the huge success of Roger Lewis's incredibly moreish Erotic Vagrancy, his joint memoir of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, it's no surprise that his 2004 memoir of Peter Sellers should be spruced up and put once more out into the world. If I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Erotic Vagrancy that's mostly because I've never really warmed to Sellers the performer or the man (the latter would be hard, to be fair, given the way he treated his wives and, well, pretty much everyone else). But Lewis gives both the career and the life his full attention here. And he is a sharp, often waspish guide: 'Because she was unobtainable, [Sophia] Loren stayed Seller's ideal woman,' he writes at one point. 'Even from beyond the grave, he was faithful to her memory and inspiration. Interviewed through a ouija board by a psychic named Micki Dahne, he said, 'Sophia was my ultimate woman.'' And it's probably worth it alone for the addition of Lewis's droll account of the filming of the big screen version of this book. Naked Portrait: A Memoir of My Father Lucian Freud (Image: Picador) Naked Portrait: A Memoir of My Father Lucian Freud, Rosie Boyt, Picador, £12.99 And talking of sacred monsters … Novelist Rosie Boyt's memoir of her dad and one of England's greatest painters of the postwar 20th century (he's jostling for the title with Bacon, I reckon) is a revealing take on the artist and the man. The word 'shocking' was used again and again in reviews of the book. Boyt, now 66, looks back on their relationship and her own life as a young woman in 1980s London. As you would expect she has the fiction writer's eye for detail. The Impossible Man: Roger Penrose and the Cost of Genius, Patchen Barss, Atlantic, £12.99, August 28 To get a measure of Patchen Barss's biography of the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose (now coming out in paperback) you just need to read the prologue which begins with an account of Penrose heating up a cup of coffee in the microwave in 2008 and then proceeds to give us a brief history of the 13.7 billion years since the birth of the universe. This account of one of the greatest cosmologists of the 20th century takes on both the science and the man. Del Amitiri (Image: free) The Tremolo Diaries, New Modern, £22, out August 28 This summer is a good one for music memoirs from ageing pop stars. As well as The Absence, Budgie's account of his life in Siouxsie and the Banshees there's also Kevin Rowland's self-flagellating memoir about his time in Dexys Midnight Runners (Bless Me Father, Ebury Spotlight, £25). But if you can wait until the end of August it's worth considering The Tremolo Diaries. At first glance it might not seem promising - a tour diary of Justin Currie's band Del Amitri as they schlep around America alongside Semisonic and Barenaked Ladies, and then around the UK and Europe in support of Simple Minds (who come out of this account very well, it has to be said). But there's much more to this than an ageing musician's grumbling about bad hotels and bad food. Because in these pages Currie is coming to terms with his own Parkinson's diagnosis - what he calls the Ghastly Affliction; his tremor, meanwhile, is named Gavin - while also dealing with the fact that the love of his life is now in a care home. And yet for all the pain and fear and heartache in these pages, it's also full of life and joy and copious swearing. I laughed out loud more than once. Currie is realistic about his condition but not maudlin about it and he has retained his very Scottish ability to be entertainingly angry at things that annoy him. The result is a thrill of a book and a great marker for new music publisher New Modern. Oh, and if BBC Scotland ever wants to make a programme that people might actually want to watch, just send Justin and a camera crew around the art galleries of Europe. His art criticism here is by turns caustic and funny. He has all the potential to be TV's new Sister Wendy. Read more Tart: Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef, Slutty Cheff, Bloomsbury, £16.99 Sex and food. Food and sex. This pseudonymous account of life in London restaurants is greedy for both. I could have done with less sex myself, but maybe that's because I'm an ageing parent these days. Ah, but the food. Our author writes about it with such glee and detail you are salivating as you read. And she brings a real energy to writing about life in kitchens (you can tell Anthony Bourdain is one of her heroes). She's also very good at nailing the misogyny, misery and pleasure of a chef's life. Namaste Motherf*ckers, Cally Beaton, Headline, £22, July 31 Language Timothy. Sorry. Language, Cally. Comedian and podcaster Cally Beaton's new book is a mash-up of memoir and manifesto aimed at offering a map to midlife female reinvention. As someone who went from being a studio exec to appearing on Live at the Apollo, she has some experience to share on the matter. Can you be funny about failure? Turns out you can. And the menopause and misogyny and the Hoffman Process (for those of you desperate to Google something). Mike Tyson (Image: Getty Images) Baddest Man: The Making of Mike Tyson, Mark Kriegal, Ebury Spotlight, £25 Granted, it's perfectly possible that the idea of spending a few hundred pages in the company of the heavyweight boxer and, lest we forget, convicted rapist, Mike Tyson may not be to your taste. Tyson's story is a brutal one, in terms of what was inflicted on him and what he inflicted on others (and sometimes himself). And yet he is still here and he's now a cannabis mogul. Kriegal's book tackles it all. How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir, Molly Jong-Fast, Picador, £16.99 Vanity Fair writer Molly Jong-Fast looks back on her turbulent, sometimes chaotic, relationship with her mother, Erica Jong, novelist, feminist and author of the notorious Fear of Flying, from childhood to Jong's descent into dementia. Expect anger, love and grief. Nouvelle Femmes, Ericka Knudson, Chronicle, £26 Film historian Ericka Knudson's new book has the rather clunky subtitle 'Modern Women of the French New Wave and Their Enduring Contribution to Cinema'. But that can't be said of its subjects, actresses Anna Karina, Jeanne Moreau, Jean Seberg, Brigitte Bardot and filmmaker Agnes Varda. Just those names conjure up images of the Left Bank, coffee and croissants, and striped sailor shirts. Actually, you don't have to imagine them. This book enhances Knudson's text with photographs, film posters and neat design.
Spectator
09-07-2025
- Spectator
One of the boys: From Scenes Like These, by Gordon M. Williams, reviewed
Although Gordon M. Williams died as recently as 2017, his heyday was the Wilson/Heath era of the late 1960s and 1970s. During that time he managed to appear on the inaugural Booker shortlist, dash off a ten-day potboiler, The Siege of Trenchard's Farm, that would be filmed by Sam Peckinpah, and continue to file a series of ghost-written newspaper columns for the England football captain Bobby Moore. As these accomplishments might suggest, Williams was the kind of writer whom the modern publishing world no longer seems to rate. Essentially, he was a literary jack-of-all-trades, alternating straightforward hackwork with more elevated material as the mood took him, and eventually abandoning fiction for a desultory career as a screenwriter. Such scattergun reputations are difficult to revive, and Picador is to be congratulated for returning Williams's one undoubted masterpiece to print. The jacket of my ancient paperback of From Scenes Like These carries a quote from the 1968 Guardian review claiming that it lays bare 'the wellsprings of violence'. Certainly these dispatches from the front line of mid-1950s Ayrshire are awash with retributive punch-ups and saloon-bar mayhem. But their real subject is corruption, or, to put it less dramatically, the urge to conform. Duncan 'Dunky' Logan, Williams's teenage hero, enters the pages as a decent-seeming apprentice farmworker with a nice girl to take to the cinema on Saturday nights and a hutchful of rabbits to inspect on Sunday. He ends as one of the lads, tanked up and fancy-free, on his way to the New Year's Day Rangers-Celtic game at Hampden Park. Innocuous and easily led, Dunky is (as Williams constantly reminds us) unable to resist the appeals of his Macmillan-era male role models to 'be a man' – that is, to get drunk, make a nuisance and treat women like dirt. Context is provided by the farm, whose elderly owner is in decline, while a newly arrived and pregnant housekeeper schemes to marry his son. In the tenement house – from which Dunky longs to escape – also live his vicious, disabled father, his genteelly aspiring mother and his younger sister. With its distinctive supporting cast – including the ladies' man Telfer, who has an eye on the housekeeper, and Dunky's old schoolmaster, who despairs of his former pupil's cheerful embrace of convention – From Scenes Like These, reissued with a shrewd introduction by James Robertson, operates on several levels. Unsurprisingly, given Williams's later collaborations with the England manager Terry Venables, some of its best scenes follow Dunky's exploits on the football field. These combine third-party reportage with Dunky's own view of himself, enabling the reader to watch the game while simultaneously occupying the space inside Dunky's head as he plays it. Dreams of becoming a professional footballer end with an on-field dust-up in which Dunky's front teeth get knocked out. All that awaits him, we infer, is a lifetime of stasis, pints of 'heavy' and following wherever the crowd may lead. Williams balances his hero's inertia with the satisfactions of fitting in. We are back with the 'Ordinary Boys' of Morrissey's song, trapped in 'the lair of their ordinary world', where they nevertheless 'feel so lucky'.
