Victoria The Queen by Julia Baird (Blackfriars, £16.99)
Frustratingly, in exchange for giving Australian author Baird access to its collection, the Royal Archives exercised a veto over some of the material she uncovered. Nevertheless, her extensive research has enabled her to complete an accessible and engrossing book which easily lives up to its claim to be an “intimate biography”. She approaches Victoria from a feminist perspective which encompasses both the political and private spheres, illuminating areas of the monarch’s life which previous biographers may have neglected. Studying her relationships with prime ministers and foreign leaders, Baird shows how Victoria balanced her innate strength of character with the conduct expected of a woman of her times, even if she did allow herself to be dominated by Albert to an extraordinary degree. Although there is a twist: despite John Brown’s well-known place in her affections, it’s still surprising to find that the items she insisted on being placed in her coffin accorded Brown a higher status than her late consort.
Summer Before The Dark by Volker Weidermann (Pushkin Press, £8.99)
One of Pushkin Press’s virtues has been to keep alive the name of Stefan Zweig, a Viennese Jew who was a hugely popular author in his day but had begun to slip into obscurity. Weidermann’s book, therefore, could have been written specifically with this publisher in mind. It’s set in Ostend in 1936, where writers who could no longer live in Germany or Austria have gathered around Zweig and his fellow author Joseph Roth. It’s not, as it first appears, a novel featuring a fictionalised Zweig, but a creative kind of literary biography, evoking, in the absence of a plot, the milieu of a group of stateless and powerless exiles pretending they’re on holiday. The plethora of characters detracts somewhat from the central relationship between Zweig and Roth (“Two men falling, but holding each other up for a time”), but its stylish, deceptively simple prose does more to bring them back to life than would a strictly biographical approach.
What A Way To Go by Julia Forster (Atlantic, £7.99)
Awash with 1980s imagery, What A Way To Go is narrated by 12-year-old Harper Richardson, whose divorced parents are trying to live, and raise their daughter, on limited incomes. She’s a lonely child, but bright, motivated and resilient, and seems to be getting shunted into the position of parenting her rather hapless, chaotic mum and dad. Forster, in barely concealed autobiographical mode, writes in a light and humorous tone, which gives rise to some great moments, such as a coffin doubling as a shelf unit until it’s needed and Harper defrosting prawns by sucking on them. However, beginning with the suspicion that the family legend of her parents getting to know each other at work “over the photocopier” is a cover story for something else, she has weighty life issues to contend with too. It’s a poignant and touching novel, even if it’s never quite clear whether Forster’s intended audience is teens or nostalgic veterans of the 1980s.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here