The Omnivore Digest (xxxv)
www.theomnivore.co.uk
Bloody Decent Book Review Award
We were deeply distressed to read about this new “Hatchet Job of the Year Award” in last Wednesday’s Guardian. We’re all for promoting literary criticism (who isn’t?) but really, to award a prize for bitchiness – as if those damned critics needed any encouragement! Authors spend years pouring their heart and soul into their manuscripts and to ridicule them in public is just gratuitously cruel, especially when they are part-Trinidadian. As for the fishy prize – what’s that all about?
So, on behalf of all you lovers of literature and fairness out there, we've had a stab at redressing the balance. Here, mercifully free of any buttery crustaceans or "celebrity" judging panel, is the shortlist for The Omnivore Award for Bloody Decent Book Reviews:
Toby Clements on The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, Telegraph
“His sentences, each one so simple and precise, are as iridescent as tropical fish, each one individual and distinct, each one expressing a single revelatory insight, thought, image or joke, and yet they work together to produce a perfectly wonderful harmonious shoal, a work of rare and dazzling genius.”
Danielle Chapman on The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy, Financial Times
“…her penchant for place-names and slang, her roguish sense of humour, and her elegiac impulse combine into a public voice that is genuinely celebratory, though with an undercurrent of mournfulness and an ironic edge.”
Julie Myerson on With the Kisses of His Mouth by Monique Roffey, Guardian
“It is astoundingly brave. It is funny. It speeds along. It has magic at its heart — that indefinable sliver of human warmth and hope that all the best, most searching memoirs seem to have.”
See the rest of the nominees over at the blog.
Win a month's/week's/day's supply of potted shrimp
Thanks to the phenomenally generous people at The Fish Society, one lucky newsletter subscriber can get their hands on FOUR TUBS of this scrumptious Lancastrian delicacy.
Three things you probably didn't know about potted shrimp:
1. The Latin name for brown shrimp — from which the potted variety is derived — is crangon crangon.
2. "Potted Shrimp" is the name of an unreleased Rolling Stones track recorded during the making of Sticky Fingers.
3. In Mary Norton's The Borrowers, a potted shrimp is highly prized booty. After Arrietty's first borrowing expedition she and Pod come home to eat sliced roast chestnuts, tea from a hollow oak-apple, and 'oh, delight of delights, a single potted shrimp'.
To be in with a chance of winning, watch this video and tell us: Which 19th century cookery writer warned of the dangers of eating unpeeled brown shrimp? Email answers to competitions@theomnivore.co.uk by Friday 27 January.
Fiction roundup
  
MARRIED LOVE by Tessa Hadley
Till death do us part?
"Unexpected, exhilarating, life enhancing... Its stories embrace by turns the middle-class artiness of a Penelope Lively novel and the pert stereotypes of comedy sketches by Victoria Wood." Matthew Dennisom, The Times VS "An accomplished, confident collection, but rather like a love affair it is best to dip in and out of it." Helen Davies, Sunday Times
THE ART OF FIELDING by Chad Harbach
Home run
"Deliciously old-fashioned: it simply gets on with the business of creating vivid, layered characters and telling a good, engrossing story." Elena Seymenliyska, Telegraph VS "The book is slowly clubbed into fatuity by Harbach’s determination to obliterate ambiguity and implication." Jonathan Beckman, Literary Review
ALL IS SONG by Samantha Harvey
Back from the Wilderness
"This is a novel of ideas ... Harvey's prose is graceful and unhurried, full of sharp observation and moments of subtly understated pathos." Carol Birch, Guardian VS "I berated myself constantly as I ploughed through this book. If I had more time, more energy, a more philosophical bent, then maybe I, too, would appreciate Harvey's genius." Lucy Atkins, Sunday Times
Paperback fiction: THE SISTERS BROTHERS by Patrick deWitt, GILLESPIE AND I by Jane Harris, WE HAD IT SO GOOD by Linda Grant, TODAY by David Miller
Non-fiction roundup
  
GREEN PHILOSOPHY by Roger Scruton
Conservation for Conservatives
“Dazzling … This is not a right-wing book but rather a tough-minded application of individualist philosophy to a global challenge.” Simon Jenkins, Sunday Times VS “Green Philosophy is beautifully written and ambitious in its scope. But it is also curiously old-fashioned, unashamedly tribal and deeply contradictory.” Caroline Lucas, Independent
CALORIES AND CORSETS by Louise Foxcroft
Eating is cheating
“[A] slim and sensible history … Foxcroft is strong on the pressures borne by women throughout the ages.” Helen Brown, Telegraph VS “…much of the book reads like bits of research strung together in roughly chronological order without much analysis.” Katie Law, Evening Standard
HEMINGWAY'S BOAT by Paul Hendrickson
Middle-aged man and the sea
“…a book written with the virtuosity of a novelist, hagiographic in the right way, sympathetic, assiduous, and imaginative.” James Salter, New York Review of Books VS “…though awed by its range and depth and perceptiveness … to my mind it’s showily and irritatingly overwritten” Sam Leith, Spectator
Paperback non-fiction: HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD by Eric Hobsbawm, THE PSYCHOPATH TEST by Jon Ronson, THE SOCIAL ANIMAL by David Broooks, WHEN I AM PLAYING WITH MY CAT... by Saul Frampton
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JACK HOLMES AND HIS FRIEND by Edmund White
 
Fag lads
"There’s a sleek, close-shaved quality to White’s prose that in passages gives it the warm lubriciousness of early Updike and the dry martini sting of Cheever."
HALF A WIFE by Gaby Hinsliff
Post-feminist parenting
“What elevates Hinsliff’s book from the normal middle-class whinge is the rigorous analysis she brings to the wider forces that have shaped modern family life..."
PAPER PROMISES by Philip Coggan
Making the world go round
"In this context of mildly hysterical panic in financial circles, Philip Coggan's book adds a welcome note of calm analysis."
BRIAN CLOUGH: THE BIOGRAPHY by Jonathan Wilson
Life of Brian
"This is an attempt to tell the story, for once, without the volume tuned up to 11 and with the stopper still firmly lodged in the whisky jar."
READ ALL BOOK REVIEWS
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THE IRON LADY
Blue widow
"Basically, this is a defanged, declawed, depoliticised Margaret Thatcher, whom we are invited to admire on the feeble grounds that she is tougher and gutsier than the men."
THE ARTIST
Silence is golden
"It’s essentially Singin’ In The Rain meets A Star Is Born with some Citizen Kane thrown in. Most of all, however, it’s a great big hug of a movie guaranteed to send you out into the cold with a smile on your face."
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
Toxic Bond
"A success on its own terms, but every aspect of it is overshadowed by another of Fincher’s films."
WARHORSE
Black Beauty Goes Forth
"For all its cinematic stylisation, it’s rooted in realism and has to obey its rules. Yet Spielberg’s Joey is so incredibly human, it’s amazing he doesn’t pen a series of antiwar poems and become the Siegfried Sassoon of the equestrian set."
SHAME
Generation sex
"With tremendous performances from Fassbender and Mulligan, and such superb technique from McQueen, this is a horrible inferno."
READ ALL FILM REVIEWS
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SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS
Young Vic
Musical Magic
"While mining the charm of an 80-year-old story, it takes a very modern theatrical approach ... It has immediacy, and a ramshackle liveliness that is enormously appealing."
HUIS CLOS
Trafalgar Studios 2
Claustrophobic
"Admirers of Beckett's deadpan handling of paradox will savour Sartre's writing - and will appreciate the discipline of Paul Hart's prickly production ... But this is theatre at its most claustrophobic and punishing, and many will find it hard work"
NOISES OFF
Old Vic
Joyful and Triumphant
"The chap sitting behind me on press night was the most deafening audience laugher I have ever encountered, but you really can’t begrudge someone a good old guffaw at stuff like this."
STONES IN HIS POCKET
Tricycle Theatre
Emerald Guile
"Programme notes compare it to both Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Ricky Gervais’s Extras but it is less densely pretentious than the first and infinitely more humane and truthful than the second. "
READ ALL THEATRE REVIEWS
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Book now
The Madness of King George III (Apollo Theatre, 18th Jan – 31st March), She Stoops to Conquer (National Theatre, 24th Jan – 28th March), The Recruiting Officer, (Donmar Warehouse, 9th Feb – 14th Apr), Hay Fever (Noel Coward Theatre, 10th Feb – 2nd June)
* Click here for all upcoming theatre *
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In other news
Streep or Swinton for BAFTA glory * John Burnside compares himself to Michaelangelo * Which literary character Joan Collins would jump into bed with * The Omnivore's crusade for accuracy on BBC Scotland *
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