the times | Saturday December 18 2021 saturday review 21
THE NUMBER IN PARENTHESES REPRESENTS CHART POSITIONS LAST WEEK. DATA SUPPLIED BY WATERSTONES FOR THE WEEK ENDING DECEMBER 11audiobook
of the
we ek
New Grub Street by
George Gissing, read
by Andrew Wincott,
Naxos, 23hr
“Everything in life comes
too soon or too late”
is the caustic moral of
New Grub Street, George
Gissing’s 1891 novel about
the travails of struggling
authors, which is rich in
the sordid details of the
Victorian obsession with
keeping up appearances.
The dashing but cynical
Jasper Milvain cultivates
the influencers of the
London literary world
and shamelessly hunts
a wealthy wife.
He is attracted to the
beautiful and serious-
minded Marian Yule,
whom he meets in “the
valley of the shadow of
books” that is the British
Museum reading room,
but she is too poor to
interest him — until she
inherits £5,000 from a
wealthy uncle. His mirror
opposite is the high-
minded but unsuccessful
Edwin Reardon, whose
much-praised first novel
proves to be his only
success, dashing his wife
Amy Yule’s hopes of his
achieving literary fame.
The Married Women’s
Property Act of 1882 plays
a crucial part in the plot.
The narrator Andrew
Wincott captures the
multitude of contrasted
characters with great
skill, projecting young
hopefuls and jaded
oldies, heavy fathers
and flirtatious daughters
with equal felicity.
Christina Hardyment
Alex O’Connell on
the timeless poetic
portrait of Santa
’Twas the
Night Before
Christmas:
A Visit from
St Nicholas
(3-7) by Clement
C Moore,
illustrations by PJ Lynch, Walker
Books, 32pp; £12.99This week Oxford University Press
told parents to scout out more
modern stories. Apparently, we recite
too many of our old favourites, the
classics, to our yawning kiddles and not
enough issue-led tales of contemporary
life. God forbid, we may even be
distracting them from the subjects
of the day.
Well, next month I’ll focus on
my favourite new yarn about a
modern-day non-binary Insta-addicted
Cinders who becomes a gang leader.
However, this week, forgive me, I’ll
focus on a beautiful reinterpretation
of a story written in 1823 with new
illustrations by the Kate Greenaway
medal winner PJ Lynch, who — dare
I say it — has really caught the
atmosphere of the time in which thestory was written. Clement C Moore, a
theologian and landowner who became
filthily rich through redeveloping and
selling off bits of Chelsea in Manhattan,
didn’t admit to writing America’s mostfamous poem until years later in life.
Many of our modern preconceptions
about the old cisgender guy with the
beard come from Moore’s descriptions.
We all know the first line — “’Twas
the Night Before Christmas” — but
some of the rhymes still take you by
surprise. Of Santa he writes: “He shook
when he laughed, like a bowl full of
jelly, he was chubby and plump, a right
jolly old elf, and I laughed when I saw
him, in spite of myself.”
Lynch, Ireland’s fourth Laureate
na nÓg for children’s literature, has
used a dark Victorian palette lit up like
a Vermeer by the glow of snow and
candle flame. The pair go together
like turkey and cranberry sauce.
To be read on Christmas Eve with
lashings of unapologetic nostalgia.children’s book
of the week
bestsellers
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10 (—)The Judge’s List
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Vintage £10.99
3 (3) Best of Matt 2021
Matt Pritchett Seven Dials £8.994 (4)Empireland: How Imperialism
Has Shaped Modern Britain
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5 (6)English Pastoral
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Cat Jarman William Collins £9.99
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8 (10)Agent Sonya Ben Macintyre
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