EASY OR BRACING?

Which do you prefer: books that go down easy — like a long, cool drink — offering relief from the anxieties of everyday life? Or books that are more bracing, which make you sit up straight and pay closer attention to the world around you? Of course, some manage to do both, and one of the more beguiling examples of recent years was Hanya Yanagihara’s outrageously compulsive yet deeply unsettling novel, A Little Life. But, however unique you may have found that reading experience, it’s as nothing compared to her overlooked first novel, The People in the Trees, a heart-stopping work of the imagination.

Also Caitlin Moran celebrates a comic masterpiece by Helen Fielding with her introduction to the 20th anniversary edition of Bridget Jones’s Diary; an entirely different sort of World Cup story is brought to us by incomparable football journalist James Montague with Thirty One Nil; and William Dalrymple reminds us how superbly he can bring the past to life with White Mughals, one of his most celebrated early works.

©Alexi 2017 www.alexibooks.com

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 22nd, 2018