A selection of reviews by Irish Timescritics
A Dangerous Liaison: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre Carole Seymour-JonesArrow Books, £8.99
The de Beauvoir-Sartre pact was daring, risky and original: they shared a lifetime of intellectual and sexual companionship. Each was the other's muse and critic. They had no secrets from each other. The result was a prodigious literary output and huge influence. This biography has all the necessary virtues of that genre: extensive research, original interviews, and an ability to tell a good story. Her interview with Bianca Bienenfeld-Lamblin, a young Jewish woman in the de Beauvoir-Sartre circle during the war years is particularly relevant. Seymour-Jones's tone is, however, consistently snide. She is obsessed with Sartre's ugliness and diminutive stature. She is, more justifiably, critical of Sartre's behaviour during the wartime Nazi occupation and of his naivety regarding Soviet Russia. But the book does do justice to the atmospheric background, with, in Parisian style, sex and cafes to the fore.
TOM MORIARTY
Netherland Joseph O'NeillHarper Perennial, £7.99
Ostensibly a novel about cricket in New York, Netherland gathered a number of publishers' rejections before going on to rave reviews and a Man Booker long-listing. But really Joseph O'Neill's third novel isn't "about" cricket; rather it's an elegant study of exile and home. The narrator is Hans van den Broek, a Dutch banker based in New York (Netherland – geddit?) whose marriage has faltered in the fallout from 9/11. When his wife moves back to London with their son, he moves into the Chelsea Hotel, with its assortment of New York flotsam and jetsam, and takes up with a distinctly dodgy, cricket-mad immigrant from Trinidad called Chuck Ramkissoon. This book has it all: a murder mystery, a love story, a Turkish transvestite, a paean to childhood, the shifting social tides of two of the world's great cities. Oh, and the final three-and-a-half pages contain some of the best writing you're ever likely to read.
ARMINTA WALLACE
The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth Frances WilsonFaber, £9.99
History has not been kind to Dorothy Wordsworth. Sister to William, she also wrote, and moved in the same literary circles as her more famous brother. She has, through the years, acquired a reputation as being somewhat hysterical, a sensitive soul whose devotion to her brother has raised more than a few biographers' eyebrows. Frances Wilson aims to set this to rights with a comprehensive look at Dorothy's life and writings, mainly through reference to her journals – judging by the reproduction of some of their pages, reading through the ink blots was a labour of love in itself. Wilson's approach to Dorothy's relationships with her work, her brother and the outside world makes for a surprisingly compelling history of one of the many remarkable women who stood behind great men of letters. It is a dramatic portrait of a talented and analytical writer deserving of more than her status as the great poet's sister.
NORA MAHONY
Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them. Philippe LegrainAbacus, £9.99
Through a mixture of detailed case-studies and statistical analysis, Philippe Legrain sets out to debunk the traditional tabloid-style xenophobia surrounding immigration and to highlight the myriad benefits of diverse, multicultural societies. The author argues that economically the strict entry requirements of countries such as Australia are counterproductive (and actually an impediment to the global economy), and also shows how migrant workers, rather than stealing jobs from natives, boost the economies of both their country of residence and their country of origin. Legrain also paints the attempts of many nations (such as Spain and America) to counter illegal immigration as illogical, immoral and ineffective. Cultural benefits are explored, and much space is given to the often rabid writings of leading anti-immigration intellectuals, whose arguments effectively disintegrate under the author's analysis. It is a well-organised and multi-faceted book; fair, detailed and passionate.
COLM FARREN
This Charming Man Marian KeyesPenguin. €9.99
Marian Keyes's new paperback offers us everything we want in a good read - characters to care about, lots of laughs and situations we can relate to; some more light-hearted than others. What Lola, Grace, Marnie and Alicia have in common is Paddy De Courcy, the charming man of the title, whose winning ways have carved him a prominent place in Irish politics and the affections of almost everyone he has ever met. But Paddy has secrets that not even his party's press office are privy to and the more involved we become in the women's stories, the more we become aware of a creeping sense of dread. Keyes, perennial resident of the bestsellers lists, paints a vivid picture of the benefits of taking life's surprises as they come, while recognising that yearning and loss, fascination and addiction also cast long shadows, and she relates a story of substance in this whopping tome that puts comedy hand in hand with tragedy and redemption. CLAIRE LOOBY