The life and hopeless loves of a Bloomsbury snob: Carrington’s Letters reviewed
Carrington’s Letters: Her Art, Her Loves, Her Friendships
Review – Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life, and Agnes Grey reissued
Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life
REVIEW: Joyce Carol Oates: The Lost Landscape – A Writer’s Coming Of Age (4th Estate)
Dorothy Parker said she'd rather cut her own throat with a blunt knife than write a memoir. This seems good advice to all. Joyce Carol Oates has written oodles of books, including memoirs. No Pulitzer has yet accrued, but the Guinness Book of Records must be hammering on the door. Oates is the willing recipient of banquets, bursaries, honorary doctorates, TV crews and film adaptations of her work. Her writing – abundant, humourless, sentimental and enragingly circular – has a crass way of exploiting violence and murder as highly marketable subject matter. But, as H L Mencken noted, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public".
