VAL HENNESSY
FAME IS THE SPUR by Howard Spring
(Apollo £14) SPANNING the years 1860 to 1939, this mammoth masterpiece is a devastating memorial to the old-time Labour party. From the poverty of Manchester’s slums — clattering clogs, soup kitchens, moribund infants — fame-seeker John Shawcross rises to the House of Lords via politics’ greasy pole.
Master-minding demos and strikes, he rouses workers to protest at the gap between rich and poor. The book throngs with strong women; details of heroic suffragette hunger-strikers being force-fed are unforgettable.
Discarding old friends and socialist principles, Shawcross, now a Lord with a grand house, servants and a son at Eton, joins the very class he opposed. He spends his disillusioned last days hoping for a new generation ‘to blow on the sparks of hope’.
BEST SHORT STORIES by W. Somerset Maugham
(Macmillan £9.99) THERE’S not one dud in this terrific collection. You enter an enticing world of expats, colonial types and, in The Verger, a London church where a conscientious old verger is sacked by the snobbish new vicar.
Two of these famous stories have been made into films: Rain, in which a vulnerable prostitute finds God but is raped by the very priest she trusted, and The Letter, about a respectable rubber-planter’s wife on trial for murder, who is pleading innocence but could be guilty.
Each story has a brilliant twist and indelible characters — human nature always manages to surprise.
PLAY IT AS IT LAYS by Joan Didion
(4th Estate £8.99) DIDION’S book contains a tantalising puff from Barack Obama, lauding her as ‘one of our sharpest, most respected observers of American politics and culture’. If so, this depiction of American culture may evoke disgust.
Corrupted by hedonistic Hollywood, Maria, 31, is a rich, pill-popping, morbidly depressed actress, and mother to a braindamaged child in care. She spends days driving aimlessly up and down deserted freeways.
Casual sex, abortion, sex-crazed men, vomiting, violence . . . good grief, there’s no let-up. Ghastly.