The Sunday Times - UK (2021-11-28)

LITERATURE

Burning Man The Ascent

of DH Lawrence

by Frances Wilson

Bloomsbury £25

DH Lawrence was a man of

contradictions: a coalminer’s

son, bohemian friend of the

Bloomsbury Group, scourge

of the feminist critic, weedy,

tubercular, towering, woman

lover/hater. He emerges from

this passionate and inventive

book as a flawed, crazed,

sometimes prophet-like

figure, self-quarrelling,

magnetic, if occasionally

downright daft. Against the

odds this exhilarating

biography manages to

rehabilitate him for the

21st-century reader.

The Library A Fragile History

by Andrew Pettegree and

Arthur der Weduwen

Profile £25

Libraries have existed for

centuries as book collections

for ancient scholars or

glittering status symbols, but

it wasn’t until the mid-19th

century that the life-changing

public sanctuary first

appeared. This sweeping

bookish history has

something for everyone; from

manuscript-collecting habits

in 14th-century Timbuktu,

to a mini-history of Mills

& Boon, it is a glorious

reminder that libraries

are priceless, in all senses.

The Adventures of Miss

Barbara Pym

by Paula Byrne

Wm Collins £25

In the late 1930s, after

graduating from Oxford,

Barbara Pym, the astute

chronicler of the 1950s

middle classes, went

through an unfortunate

Nazi phase. Having

fallen in love with an SS

officer, she peroxided

her hair and wore a

swastika. She came to

her senses when war

broke out, deeply

regretting this misstep, and

emerges from this lively

biography as a kind and

intelligent woman of passions

— mostly thwarted. Her 1950s

success petered out in the

Swinging Sixties and she was

lost in the literary wilderness

until her friend Philip Larkin

his troubles were forgivable:

as a young revolutionary he

survived a mock execution and

Siberian exile and went on to

produce some of the most

extraordinary 19th-century

novels. Christofi collages

fragments from the fiction

and journals to explore his

three great love affairs. The

result, a meticulously sourced,

semi-novelistic “biography”,

is both immersive and

extraordinary.

Manifesto

by Bernardine Evaristo

Hamish Hamilton £14.99

When Evaristo won the 2019

Booker prize, the acceptance

speech wasn’t a problem.

Decades previously, as a

little-known writer trying to

boost her self-confidence, she

had fully visualised herself

winning the prize. This

honest, engaging memoir

shares such gems, along with

details of her working-class

south London childhood and

the obstacles she overcame as

a mixed-race woman in the

arts. An optimist, powered by

gritty self-belief, she scatters

generous tips throughout.

The Young HG Wells

Changing the World

by Claire Tomalin

Viking £20

A sickly 7st shopkeeper’s son

from Bromley with a passion

for science, the teenage Wells

seemed unlikely to become a

famous literary heart-throb.

Yet by middle age he had

beefed up, married, divorced,

remarried, written prolifically,

and had affairs with high-

profile literary women (most

notably Rebecca West).

Tomalin’s richly informative

portrait of a genius in his

prime is a delight.

Speak, Silence In Search of

WG Sebald by Carole Angier

Bloomsbury £30

WG Sebald was famously

oversensitive. Carole Angier

believes this is what made him

an “exquisite” author. His

extraordinary books, including

The Rings of Saturn (1995) and

Austerlitz (2001), mixed

biography, fiction, history and

memoir, fuelled by details

ruthlessly culled from the lives

of friends and family. Angier

traces these creative influences

in a remarkable, vivid portrait

of an isolated, “gloomy, kind,

funny” German émigré, whose

creative life consumed him

until he died, aged only 57, in

a car crash in East Anglia. c

Drama on the page

engineered her revival in the

1970s. Paula Byrne has us

rooting for her all the way.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

by George Saunders

Bloomsbury £16.99

Booker-winning novelist and

short-story writer George

Saunders has taught creative

writing in the US for the past

20 years. Here, he offers us a

seat in his class to examine

Russian short stories by

Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev

and Gogol. To some this

might sound like torture; it

is anything but. Saunders is

a delightful and warm

entertainer who has

produced not just a

fascinating resource for

aspiring authors, but an

expert, enthusiastic

explanation of how great

stories actually work.

Dostoevsky in Love

An Intimate Life

by Alex Christofi

Bloomsbury £20

Myopic and epileptic,

a martyr to

haemorrhoids and

bladder infections,

constantly facing

financial ruin thanks

to gambling,

Dostoevsky was

hardly a catch. But

BOOKS OF THE YEAR

A deep dive George

Saunders gives lessons in

short-story writing. Below:

Bernardine Evaristo

Her Diaries

and

Notebooks

by Patricia

Highsmith

Weidenfeld

£30

Highsmith’s reputation as

a rude and misanthropic

alcoholic who kept live

snails in her bra is not

entirely unfair. The author

left 38 notebooks and 18

diaries, which the heroic

Anna von Planta has

decoded and cut into this

vast, engrossing collection.

We get young Pat’s hopeful

lesbian passions, her

endless heartbreaks, her

dark, consuming creativity

and her embittered,

sometimes vulnerable later

years in Europe. “Every artist

possesses a core — and

this core remains forever

untouched,” she wrote in

1943 — but this book offers

a spyhole into her raging

mind, and it is fascinating.

OUR BOOK

OF THE YEAR

Lucy Atkins

unearths the

struggles and

traumas of some of

our greatest writers

SUKI DHANA

JOHNNY LOUIS/GETTY IMAGES

42 28 November 2021