I enjoy reading book reviews almost as much as I like writing them, which is to say very much indeed, and don’t remotely subscribe to the view that they don’t shift copies. I can’t be the only person who often ends up buying a book solely because a critic made it sound unmissable. All the same, it has to be said that an awful lot of books do slip through the cracks.
The best non-fiction I’ve read so far this year is Helen Garner’s This House of Grief, a long and masterly account of the trial of an Australian man who drove his three small children off a bridge – and yet it was reviewed hardly at all. I stumbled on it only by chance in a bookshop. As for old books – and in our culture, writing becomes “old” almost overnight – they get written about very rarely. The best we can hope for, usually, is some middle-aged novelist with a hardback to plug explaining how reading Don DeLillo completely changed his life.
In this column, then, I’m going to attempt to plug a few of these cracks. If I come across a great new book that seems not to have had any attention, I will duly press it on you. I will tell you about the buried treasure I’ve found in a secondhand bookshop, the forgotten booty I’ve unexpectedly pulled from my bookshelves. I’ll dig out those books, new and old, that speak to the mood, whether we’re all thinking about North Korea or sibling rivalry, Saudi Arabia or suburban angst.
It goes without saying this will be a highly subjective business. My taste, like anyone else’s, comes with more than its share of blind spots and irrational passions. But if there do turn out to be weeks when you think I’ve lost the plot, well, doubtless you’ll let me know. That’s going to be part of the fun.
