Family history
Prejudice in Pennsylvania: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride, reviewed
Inspired by his own family history, McBride explores the problems faced by a Jewish shopkeeper and her black neighbours in the small town of Chicken Hill in the 1930s
The changing face of Ireland
A dead poet’s dangerous aura continues to haunt his daughter and 23-year old granddaughter in this story of an unhappy family set in rapidly changing Ireland
The shocking truth behind the Baghdad bombings of 1950 and 1951
Avi Shlaim claims to have uncovered undeniable proof that Zionist agents were responsible for targeting the Jewish community, forcing them to flee Iraq and settle in Israel
Polly Toynbee searches in vain for one working-class ancestor
Though many of her distinguished forebears campaigned vigorously against privilege and conservative elitism, they were still too posh for Toynbee’s comfort
Literary charades
Blending fact and fiction, France combines a tale of antics on a creative writing course with episodes from her family life
Mad men plotting: The Unfolding, by A.M. Homes, reviewed
Fifteen years ago, A.M. Homes published The Mistress’s Daughter, an explosive, painful account of how she met her birth mother,…
Ian McEwan’s capacity for reinvention is astonishing
Ian McEwan’s latest novel is unusually long and autobiographical. It’s surprising in other ways, too, says Claire Lowdon
A.N. Wilson has many regrets
‘Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults.’ A.N. Wilson seems, on the surface, to have taken to heart…
An angry poltergeist: Long Shadows, by Abigail Cutter, reviewed
Long Shadows, a powerful novel set mainly in the American civil war, is very unlike Gone with the Wind. The…
Seize the moment: Undercurrent, by Barney Norris, reviewed
Barney Norris’s third novel opens with a wedding in April. The couple tying the knot don’t matter; it’s the occasion…
Fleshing out family history: Ancestry, by Simon Mawer, reviewed
DNA test kits may have been all the rage in recent years, but how much can they really tell us…
All about my mother: Édouard Louis’s latest family saga
Shunned by his father and his peers because of his homosexuality, Édouard Louis (born Eddy Bellegueule in 1992) left his village…
Messy family matters: Bad Relations, by Cressida Connolly, reviewed
Cressida Connolly’s new novel begins with a couple of endings. It’s spring 1855, and on the battlefields of the Crimea…
Jonathan Bate weaves a memoir around madness in English literature
There is a trend for books in which academics write personally about their engagement with literature. Examples include Lara Feigel’s…
Christina Patterson overcomes family misfortunes
The journalist and broadcaster Christina Patterson’s memoir begins promisingly. She has a talent for vivid visual description, not least: ‘We…
Variations on a theme: To Paradise, by Hanya Yanagihara, reviewed
My daunting brief: to tell you about Hanya Yanagihara and her new, uncategorisable 720-page novel in 550 words. It’s the…
The cosmopolitan spirit of the Middle East vanished with the Ottomans
One of the most depressing vignettes in Michael Vatikiotis’s agreeably meandering account of his cosmopolitan family’s experiences in the Near…
From family home to mausoleum: the Musée Nissim Camondo
The potter and author Edmund de Waal revisits familiar terrain at an angle in his third book, Letters to Camondo.…
Family secrets: Life Sentences, by Billy O’Callaghan, reviewed
Despite innovative work by younger writers, there remains a prominent strain in Irish literature of what we might call the…
Aunt Munca’s murky past
Kiss Myself Goodbye. It sounds a bit like a William Boyd novel. It looks likea William Boyd novel, too: the…
Treasures or clutter? The problem of knowing what to keep
Every so often the past makes a pass at you. An old school report, a train ticket, a curl from…
When six of her 12 children went mad, Mimi Galvin did her best to make to light of it
Don Galvin and Mimi Blayney married in December 1944. It was a shotgun wedding. They had been high school sweethearts.…
An intellectual dynasty: the Darwins, Wedgwoods and their notable intermarriages
Readers of Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage will remember that its author set out to write a life of…
The best way to escape my abusive family was to write novels
Early on in Amy Tan’s 1989 bestseller, The Joy Luck Club, a Chinese concubine slices a chunk of flesh from…
More family history from Knole and Sissinghurst
In deciding to write a book about her forebears and herself, Juliet Nicolson follows in their footsteps. Given that her…
