Review by Marianne Knowles

During the summer of 2005, I came across a book called Author, Author in a bookshop in Japan, which I was very pleased about. Not only was this book in 
English amongst myriad Manga and totally indefinable fiction, (I had not, and have still not learned Japanese) but it was also written by one of my favourite authors, David Lodge.

It is a tad challenging, I imagine, to write a historically sound account, even with the magic of the novel form, of a person you greatly admire and a master in an art that you have practiced rather successfully yourself.

Yet through Author, Author, David Lodge triumphantly flows narrative in a literary representation of his esteemed subject Henry James. Utterly engaging description aids a well formed story, and an apt use of language transports the reader to James’ own time and place, whilst a multi-layered complex structure help form the protagonist himself.

By contrasting James’ ping pong between success and professional devastation with George du Maurier’s dramatic (and not unchallenged) rise to fame, Lodge provides an anchor to his novel’s journey. The stability keeps both James and Lodge on the straight and narrow, provides consistency and produces a rich and credible tale.

Lodge retains his trademark irony, (‘in any case I hate the idea of selling books as if they were brands of soap,’ reports Lodge of James during 1880s), and the way the book is constructed, not necessarily in a linear fashion, is not completely unheard of in Lodge’s art of fiction; while Author, Author finds brilliance in the form of a new kind of creation.

Through James, Lodge builds hopes and dreams; he raises them up, crashes them down, and leaves you with, at least, a deep sense of justice and, in all likelihood, many a seed of creativity. Never was a there a more inspiring book for reader or writer.

Author, Author by David Lodge (Penguin, £7.99) is out now.

Marianne Knowles writes lots of things about lots of things and hopes to become very good at it one day - she has lived and lives in Manchester, Nottingham and Japan and has a degree in Linguistics.

Review by Katherine Woodfine

The latest short story collection from Man Booker prizewinner Anne Enright is well named Taking Pictures. This is, after all, a book which resembles a gallery of photographs, conjuring up a vivid series of grainy mug-shots, faded family portraits, creased holiday snaps, simultaneously commonplace and yet alive with nostalgia and resonance. Each of these finely tuned lyrical stories provides us with a tantalising glimpse into the secret lives of quite ordinary women, reaching beyond the surface of everyday domestic existence to hint at the intricacies and nuances of unspoken fears, hopes and betrayals. For each of the women in Enright’s portrait gallery seem to be haunted by ghosts of one kind or another, just as Michelle, in “Caravan”, feels herself to be, quite literally, haunted by the spirit of a woman who had “died playing cards while her children slept, within hands’ reach, in the room next door”.

These stories do not always make for very comfortable reading. Enright, as a writer, holds nothing back: it is evident that like the unhappy narrator of “Here’s to Love”, she is determined to “tell it like it is”. Her prose-style is sharp-eyed and fiercely unsentimental, her characters casually shrug their way through the raw pain of loss and disappointment, and her tone often feels alarmingly bleak. But this collection is nothing if not unpredictable, and so there is always a wry, subversive humour which cuts through the darkness: Enright is mistress of the sharp one-liner, as exemplified by an elderly lady who sums up her offensive neighbour as a “horrible person… the kind of man who’d be sarcastic to a dog.” But ultimately, what makes these stories linger long after the book is closed are the hints of final redemption which Enright offers: as in “Pillow” where the confused Alison at last finds herself able to locate “me… my very self, fluttering in my chest and trying to get out of there, exultant, like it had been living in the wrong person and was finally going home.”

Taking Pictures by Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape, £12.99) is out now.

Katherine Woodfine is a sometime writer and expert procrastinator. She blogs about writing, art and red shoes at www.followtheyellowbrick.blogspot.com