Michael Johnston's Blog, page 2

‘Autumn’ by Ali Smith

I liked it so much that I sat down and straightaway reread Autumn by Ali Smith [London: Penguin, 2017]. Short-listed for this year’s Man Booker, what’s not to like about it? Apart from Smith’s gift for language, patterning, sound games, literary allusions (two in the first two lines) and alliterations, reminding and moving to and …

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The Man Booker Prize 2017

The short list has been announced and it is the usual mixture of old hands and debut writers. I find it harder this year to pick the winner. The huge, nearly 900 pages of fairly closely packed prose, new novel from Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1, [Faber & Faber] must stand a very good …

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‘Expo 58’ by Jonathan Coe

The first of the post-war World Fairs was held in Brussels in 1958: I remember it well.  Jonathan Coe captures the flavour of it in his recent Expo 58 [London: Viking, 2014].  One of my own tweed designs was on show in the British Pavilion and for no better reason than that I travelled over …

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‘J’ by Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson is a writer of consummate skill and his most recent novel with its shortest of all possible title J [London: Jonathan Cape, 2014] was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He won that prize in 2010 with the extremely witty and wonderfully funny The Finkler Question. Jacobson is very much a Jewish writer …

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‘1Q84’ by Haruki Murakami

Devoted readers of Murakami’s novels, in more than forty languages, will wonder how it has taken me so long to get here. Now I have arrived, I am taking up permanent residence. 1Q84 [London; Vintage, 2012 translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel] was published in Japan in 2009/10 and it just happened to jump …

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‘Hag-Seed: The Tempest Retold’ by Margaret Atwood

If you feel a need to have the story of Shakespeare’s Tempest retold then this, Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood [London: Hogarth 2016] is the way to do it. This is no mere pastiche. Reflecting Atwood’s seemingly effortless skill as a writer, she takes the themes of the play and creates a new, but somewhat less …

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‘Ragnarok: The End of the Gods’ by A S Byatt

Antonia Byatt’s personal account of the end of the Gods. Rognarok [Edinburgh: Canongate, 2012] owes its origin to wartime reading by a clearly autobiographic ‘thin girl’ who poured over a copy of Asgard and the Gods using a torch under the blankets. That early reading and regular re-reading led the thin girl’s enquiring mind to …

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‘The Draughtsman’ by Robert Lautner

Robert Lautner’s second novel, The Draughtsman [London: Borough Press, 2017] is beautifully written, as exciting as any thriller, profoundly moving and with a significant moral message. It is in contention for my Book of the Year. Imagine you have been unemployed since you graduated from university as a draughtsman and that, at last, you are …

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‘The Emperor Waltz’ by Philip Hensher

Reading a novel by Philip Hensher is something to savour and The Emperor Waltz [London: Fourth Estate, 2014] is full of flavour and with plenty to chew on. The reader is offered several interwoven stories melding together more and more as the novel moves to its very satisfying conclusion. Hensher is a gay writer who …

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‘The Martian’ by Andy Weir

No one, neither Robinson Crusoe on his desert island nor Captain Bligh on his 4,000 mile voyage to safety in an open boat, has had such a life threatening adventure as Mark Watney in Andrew Weir’s accomplished novel, The Martian [London: Del Rey, 2014]. Mostly told in the first person log of the man who …

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