The Observer | 01. 1 0. 17 | THE NEW REVIEW 37
‘Mary Portas demystifi es
Barbie: Th e Most Famous
Doll in the World’
TV, page 41
Travis Elborough has raided the diaries and
journals of 100 witnesses to compile this
intriguing history of modern Britain. His
sources range from movers and shakers
to the relatively obscure and embrace all
aspects of social, political and cultural life.
Th ere is plenty to amuse and horrify.
Th is is Beatrice Webb in 1903 on dinner with
a brash young MP called Winston Churchill:
“First impressions: restless, almost
intolerably so ... egotistical, bumptious,
shallow minded and reactionary, but with
a certain personal magnetism, great pluck
and some originality.”
Th e century ends with a whimper from
former MP Oona King: “My whole life I
thought I’d be at a wild party at the end
of the millennium. Instead, I was queuing
outside Stratford tube station. It was the
only way to get to the Dome.”
Chris MullinIn this enchanting biblio-memoir,
russophile Viv Groskop, or “Vipulenka”- her own personal diminutive, which
translates as “Dearest Teeny Tiny Little
VIP” via a mishearing of “Vivka” (“Little
Viv”) as “Veepka” (“Little VIP”) – takes
readers through Russian literature by
means of what she’s learn ed from the
classics. Arriving in Russia as a student
in the 1990s, she’s shocked to discover
everyone banging on about fate.
Nevertheless, she falls in love with the
people and the literature , her impressive
knowledge of which she conveys with a
charmingly breezy tone. Th is is the fi rst
time I’ve seen Tolstoy described as “Oprah
Winfrey with a beard”. It’s Samantha Ellis’s
How to Be a Heroine meets Elif Batuman’s
Th e Possessed : Adventures with Russian
Books and the People Who Read Th em.
Lucy Scholes
Th is magnifi cent treasury of classical music
selects a song for each day of the year -
beginning with Bach, closing with Strauss
and resounding with an arra y of favourites
and hidden gems. It spans a thousand
years and innumerable emotional textures.
Believing that classical music should be
accessible to all, the author shows how it
can be “a powerful mental tonic”, enhancing
our lives. “We are a music-making
species , ” she writes, exploring how people
have used music to connect with one
another. Alongside profound insights, she
is adept, too, at the pithy summary (“Philip
Glass is musical Marmite”).
Anita SethiIN BRIEF...
Our History of the
20th Century
Compiled by Travis Elborough
Michael O’Mara Books £25Th e Anna Karenina Fix:
Life Lessons from Russian
Literature Viv Groskop
Fig Tree £14.99Year of Wonder: Classical
Music for Every Day
Clemency Burton-Hill
Headline Home £20Th e Schooldays of Jesus
JM Coetzee
Vintage £8.99A Treatise of
Human Nature
David Hume (1739)The career and
achievements
of the Scottish
philosopher David
Hume is a parable
of the writing life that speaks with
eloquence about the progress
of ideas in the marketplace of
free debate. Born and educated
in Edinburgh, Hume acquired
an appetite for philosophy at
a precociously young age. The
Treatise of Human Nature, his fi rst
major work as a philosopher, was
completed in 1738 when he was
28; and published anonymously
the following year. His ambitious
intention was to construct a science
of man by which to appraise the
psychological basis of human
nature , argu ing that it was passion
not reason that moderates human
behaviour.
The publication was a disaster.
He later observed that it “fell still-
born from the press”. Today, his
Treatise is widely considered to be
a keystone of western philosophy.
In 1740, however, the critics were
savage, describing his work as
“abstract and unintelligible”.
It’s not hard to see why. It makes
few concessions to the reader.
Organised in three parts (Of the
Understanding; Of the Passions;
Of Morals), it prosecutes its thesis
that “sympathy is the chief source
of moral distinctions” with clinical
exactitude, in the driest prose.
Hume had devoted his savings
to his book and was not going to
give up. Stoically, he pronounced“every object contemptible except
the improvements of my talents
in literature”. And so, despite
his bad press, Hume declared: “I
soon recovered from the blow and
prosecuted with great ardour my
studies in the country.”
He reworked material from
the Treatise into Concerning
Human Understanding (1748)
and Concerning the Principles of
Morals (1751). These, Hume wrote,
with typical brio, were “of all my
writings, incomparably the best”.
Hume became one of the great
intellects of his time, a cultural
icon, renowned in London and
Scotland. He was forever in search
of new kinds of self-expression and,
at the end of his life, he published
a fi ve-page autobiographical
essay, writing dispassionately
of his imminent demise: “I now
reckon upon a speedy dissolution.
I have never suff ered a moment’s
abatement of my spirits...”
Cheerfully, Hume did however
confess that a “love of literary
fame” had served as his “ruling
passion”. He claimed that this
ambition “never soured my temper,
notwithstanding my frequent
disappointments”. The reception
of the Treatise was one of these,
he admitted. With an observation
that many writers might take to
heart, he said that his philosophical
debut’s immediate failure “had
proceeded more from the manner
than the matter”. Hume explained
his meaning thus: “I had been guilty
of a very usual indiscretion, in going
to the press too early.”For an extended version of this
review go to theguardian.com/books100 BEST NONFICTION
BOOKS OF ALL TIME
By Robert McCrum
PAPERBACK OF THE WEEK
YOUNG ADULTS’ BOOK OF THE WEEK
The Schooldays of Jesus follows on the
heels of its predecessor, The Childhood
of Jesus. In that novel, we met Davíd
and Simón , arriving memory-less in a
Spanish-speaking city named Novilla , a
vast refugee camp operated on the most
enlightened and benevolent lines where
humans were nonetheless treated
as objects to be measured, ordered
and controlled.
Simón, Davíd and Davíd’s mother,
Inés , fl ed Novilla, heading for a town
called Estrella. It is here that we pick up
the story with Simón and Inés arguing
over how best to educate the six-year-
old Davíd. Finally, Davíd is sent to the
local Academy of Dance, run by a Juan
Sebastián Arroyo and his elegant wife,
Ana Magdalena (many of the names
in the book are obscurely signifi cant).
A precocious and exasperating child,
Davíd appears to fl ourish, forming
a particularly close bond with
Ana Magdalena.Lauren St John ’s novels conjure
up rich, evocative landscapes and
inquisitive, resilient children, both
much in evidence in her latest
adventure story that travels from Africa
to the Highlands of Scotland.
Growing up in Nairobi, 12-year-old
Makena dreams of climbing Mount
Kenya, like her mountain guide father.
But when tragedy strikes, darkness falls
and the city slums become her harsh
new reality. There she meets another
forgotten child, ballet dancer Snow,
and glimpses an elusive white fox,Th e Snow Angel
Lauren St John
Head of Zeus £10.99Estrella is as blandly well meaning as
Novilla before it. The town’s newspaper
reports on “ the theft of a lawnmower
from a shed (unlocked) and vandalism
at a public toilet”. Against this banal
backdrop, a real crime takes place.
Dmitri , a creepy guard at the town’s
museum, murders Ana Magdalena.
Simón attends Dmitri’s trial, where
the judges do everything they can
to mitigate the off ence, leaving the
murderer raving in the dock, assuring
them of his genuine ill-will, and Simón
questioning the extent to which his
own internal landscape has been
resculpted by the stultifying amiability
of his adopted land. In Dmitri, he fi nds
a model for real feeling. When the
judges ask for a recess in order for the
suspect to cool down, Simón has the
fi rst of a series of revelations. “Allow our
passions to cool, he thinks: what passion
do I feel except a passion for irritation?”
The Schooldays of Jesus is delivered in
language stripped of all ornament and
aff ect. It is obscurely compelling, often
very funny and full of sudden depths.
A work of many small but signifi cant
truths, rather than one central message ,
it is a novel stubbornly committed to its
own way of doing things. Alex Prestonwh ich appears to protect her. Makena’s
search for a home ultimately takes her
to Scotland, where mountains prove,
once more, to be a refuge, and
off er the happy ending she
so yearns for.
Despite the book’s title
this is by no means a cosy
read. The dangers faced
by Makena are starkly
real: the devastating
eff ect of E bola and
the perils of poverty-
stricken life in the slums. St
John doesn’t gloss over these
hardships but a powerful thread of
hope and humanity shines through the
story, transforming it into something
utterly life-affi rming. Despite theCrime fans are spoiled for choice
these days. But sometimes, all we want
is a good, solid police procedural,
preferably set somewhere interesting,
preferably with a troubled, renegade
investigator who refuses to listen when
their boss tells them to leave an avenue
of investigation alone. And in Sarah
Wa r d ’s A Patient Fury , that’s exactly
what we get.
This is Ward’s third mystery
featuring Detective Constable Connie
Childs , a CID offi cer in Derbyshire.
Connie is back at work after the events
of A Deadly Thaw, but isn’t really on
top of things – she’s distracted and
suff ering from insomnia. Regardless,
her boss, DI Sadler, calls her in the
early hours after a report of suspicious
deaths following a house fi re. When
they arrive, Connie vomits when
she sees the superbly grotesque
scene displayed in a broken window:
“Dangling behind the ruined glass was
the outline of a body slowly revolving
in a sickening dance. As they watched,
the face turned towards them.”
But there’s more: the body is that
of a woman – a mother. The burning
house also contains the bodies of her
THRILLER
OF THE MONTH
Home fi res
burning in
Derbyshire
husband and her small son, whom the
reader already knows have been killed
with a claw hammer. Connie jumps
to the conclusion that “we’re going
to be looking at another case where a
man thought it was okay to obliterate
a family because of his skewed
thinking”, but forensics point to the
mother, Francesca , as the murderer. It
looks cut-and-dried, but Connie, small
and combative, just can’t accept it. It
doesn’t make sense, she keeps saying.
And “don’t you think acts have got to
have a logic to them? ”
When Sadler won’t listen , Connie
sets out to prove why, digging into
the history of the surviving family,
Francesca’s stepson and stepdaughter
George and Julia , uncovering more
about their tragic past. Because thisisn’t the fi rst member of their family
to be declared dead under mysterious
circumstances: almost 40 years before,
George and Julia’s mother went
missing, leaving a note on the door
saying she’d be back in two minutes,
and never return ed.
Ward, a Derbyshire resident ,
crime-fi ction blogger and judge for
the Petrona award for Scandinavian
translated crime novels , layers her
story together carefully. We jump
back and forth in time, and between
perspectives, as the details of the past
mystery and present murders become
clearer. Julia, an intriguing fi gure, is
a tour guide to the local caves by day,
and by night takes tourists on ghost
walks around the town. She also posts
pleading messages on missing personschallenges she faces, Makena is a
survivor, not a victim. This is a hymn
to the strength of the human spirit,
the power of friendship and the
healing beauty of nature.
Cornish artist Catherine
Hyde ’s full-page
illustrations elevate
The Snow Angel into an
exceptionally beautiful
gift book, lending shape
and atmosphere to the
magic glimmering beneath
the words of this modern-day
fairytale. Fiona NobleTo order The Snow Angel for £9.34
go to guardianbookshop.com or call
0330 333 6846A Patient Fury
Sarah Ward
Faber £12.99, pp400
NO 87
websites, begging the mother she still
believes is alive to come home. “I will
survive this, she thought. The darkness
won’t overcome me. This is not the fi rst
bad thing to have happened to me.”
Ward scatters her clues carefully. It’s
not hard to work out who everything’s
pointing to, but it’s enjoyable putting
it all together, and both Connie, “a girl
who things happen to”, and Julia (“I
feel frozen. It’s like a sheet of glass
is separating me from the rest of the
world. I’m trying to feel emotion but
there’s nothing there”), are intelligent,
perceptive companions along the way.
Alison FloodTo order A Patient Fury for £11.04
go to guardianbookshop.com or call
0330 333 6846To order Our History of the 20th Century
for £21.25, Th e Anna Karenina Fix
for £12.74 or Year of Wonder for £17
go to guardianbookshop.com or call
0330 333 6846Suspicious deaths following a house fire raise the alarm in Sarah Ward’s third mystery featuring DC Connie Childs. Alamystifi es
amous
d’