ARTS 27
In this “entertainingly forthright
history”, Bryan Appleyard sets out to
document a way of life that he believes
is vanishing, said Andrew Anthony in
The Observer. “Within a few years,”
he writes, “owning a car might seem as
eccentric as owning a train or a bus. Or
perhaps it will simply be illegal.” Yet his
book is no lament or eulogy. Instead, it’s an “acknowledgement
of the extraordinary cultural and environmental impact the car
has had on this planet in the last 135-plus years”.
Appleyard tells the story of the car via sharply drawn portraits
of key manufacturers and designers: Henry Ford and Alfred
Sloan (the founder of General Motors) in the US; Japan’s
Soichiro Honda; Elon Musk, whose Tesla, he believes, marks the
beginning of the end for the automobile. But his book is at its
“most acute” when he muses on the “cultural effects of the car”.
At one point, he reflects on the “existential lure of the road trip”
and the “emotional draw of imagined destinations”; at another,
he dissects the illogicality of our attitude to traffic jams, which
we invariably see “as something thrust upon us, rather than
a whole of which we form an active part”.
“Well known to Sunday Times
readers as a thoughtful interpreter of
our frets and anxieties”, Appleyard is
an unusually high-minded chronicler
of the automobile, said Stephen Bayley
in The Spectator. “His car banter is
more Public Intellectual than Public
House.” While he nicely illuminates
the fundamental paradox of the car –
“that the same machine that liberates
has also enslaved us” – his narrative
travels down rather well-trodden
ground at times, as when, for instance,
he describes the car-related “calamity”
that befell James Dean. He also
neglects the importance of politics, said
Stephen Bush in the Financial Times.
“At times, it feels as if Appleyard believes that the reasons for the
car’s dominance is solely that cars are cool.” But this overlooks
the role played by interest groups such as the US automobile
lobby in shaping the 20th century’s car obsession. “Still, The Car
is a fun ride, while it lasts.”
Towards the end, Appleyard’s tone turns “elegiac”, as he
envisages a future in which cars as we know them are replaced
by autonomous electric vehicles, said James McConnachie
in The Sunday Times. He isn’t enamoured of such a future,
suggesting that it will be “freedom-destroying”. Like many men
of his generation, Appleyard is a car obsessive who also “feels
guilty” about being one. He recognises that cars are “disgustingly
20th century”, but he has put his conflicting feelings to good
use in this “penetrating” and highly enjoyable study.The Car
by Bryan Appleyard
Orion 322pp £22
The Week bookshop £17.99
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
Douglas Stuart’s debut, Shuggie Bain – the
winner of the 2020 Booker Prize – was a “bleak
autobiographical novel about a young boy caring
for his alcoholic mother in 1980s Glasgow”, said
Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times. His
follow-up is “cut from the same cloth”. Fifteen-
year-old Mungo lives with his mother and two
older siblings in Glasgow’s East End. “His brother, Hamish, is a Faginesque
Protestant gang leader; his sister, Jodie, is a do-gooding fallen angel; and their
mother, Mo-Maw, is a woman ruined by alcohol.” As the novel opens, Mungo is
shooed off by his mother on a fishing trip with two menacing strangers from her
Alcoholics Anonymous group, who promise to teach him “masculine pursuits”.
Interspersed with this “gruesome excursion” are chapters set a few months
earlier, detailing Mungo’s first love affair, with a Catholic neighbour called
James. Although this “alternating timeline” feels forced at times, this is still a
“richly abundant” work packed with fine writing and “colourful characters”.
It may be felt – with some justification – that Stuart has written the same
book twice, said Nikhil Krishnan in The Daily Telegraph. Yet he “makes small
differences count”. Because Mungo is older than Shuggie, he is able to see in
his sexuality “not just a source of difference and alienation, but a possible route
to escape and emancipation”. And Stuart widens his focus beyond family life,
taking in the “Jets and Sharks world” of Glasgow’s sectarian politics.
Like its predecessor, this “bear hug of a new novel” has a “yeasty whiff of the
autobiographical” about it, said Hillary Kelly in the Los Angeles Times. If you
adored Shuggie Bain, this book “will please you on every page”.
Novel of the week
Young Mungo
by Douglas Stuart
Picador 400pp £16.99
The Week bookshop £13.99
The Meat Paradox
by Rob Percival
Little Brown 384pp £18.99
The Week bookshop £14.99There’s no shortage of books pontificating on
why we “need to swap the sausage sarnies for
tofu tempura”, said Christina Patterson in
The Sunday Times. What this one does is “much
more interesting”. Rob Percival, the head of
food policy for the Soil Association, sets out to
explore our “psychological relationship with
meat”. Meat-eating, he believes, involves a
“paradox”, said Julian Baggini in The Guardian.
Most people feel sympathy for animals – and yet
are prepared, by eating meat, to condone their
mass slaughter. He sets out to understand what
makes these contradictory viewpoints possible.
Percival does a “powerful job” of detailing the
damage done by “modern meat-eating”, said Bee
Wilson in the Financial Times. And yet his book
is impressively nuanced: he also exposes the
“chicanery” of some vegan arguments – such
as the idea that meat-based diets can never be
as healthy as non-meat ones. Where the book
is lacking is in “practical solutions”. Percival
believes that meat production urgently needs to
change – and yet there is no clear proposal here
to “reform a global meat industry that causes
so much ethical and environmental harm”.To order these titles or any other book in print, visit
theweekbookshop.co.uk or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835
Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm9 April 2022 THE WEEK