Books | The Guardian's Journal -- Day [entries|friends|calendar] Books | The Guardian [ website | Books | The Guardian ] [ userinfo | scribbld userinfo ] [ calendar | scribbld calendar ]

Can We Be Happier? by Richard Layard review – a breathless tribute to the “science of happiness” [23 Jan 2020|07:30am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/23/can-we-be-happier-richard-layard-review This hard sell from the former ‘happiness tsar’ may be a work of passion but it is slapdash, paternalistic and liable to cause some misery Almost any product can be branded, in the wearisome idiom of advertising, a “revolution”. So it is with the happiness industry which, in Richard Layard’s brash sales pitch, is both a “happiness revolution” and a “world happiness movement”. This book is a long-form advertisement that brooks no dissent – a breathless tribute to the “science of happiness”, encompassing “mind-training”, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and behavioural economics. No one could be better placed to write this than New Labour’s former “happiness tsar”. It was Layard, as he reminds readers, who persuaded New Labour to offer CBT to depressed and anxious patients on the NHS. Despite a glut of studies challenging the efficacy of the treatment, he has lost none of his confidence in it. Indeed, far from engaging with the bad news, he now suggests it can treat everything from schizophrenia to domestic abusers. Neither the backlash against the happiness industry, nor questions about the integrity of mindfulness – a bowdlerisation of Buddhist meditation – are acknowledged, much less allowed to check his enthusiasm. The book approaches even its most cliched subjects, from 18th-century moral philosophy to New Age thought, with new-born astonishment. Continue reading... post comment

Low by Jeet Thayil review – a lost weekend in Mumbai [23 Jan 2020|08:59am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/23/low-by-jeet-thayil-review A man’s journey to Mumbai to sprinkle his beloved’s ashes turns into a drug-fuelled trip to oblivion The Indian novelist, poet and musician Jeet Thayil has much in common with the addled protagonist of his new novel, Dominic Ullis. Both write books, have had long experience with drug addiction, and are bearers of the hepatitis C virus (Thayil’s Booker-shortlisted first novel, Narcopolis, was dedicated to “HCV”). The author and his creation also share the tragedy of having lost a young wife. In Low, after quitting her “dream gig” in publishing, Dominic’s wife Aki fulfils a long-nurtured death wish by hanging herself in the couple’s New Delhi apartment, leaving him to find her body. From this morbid seed flowers what turns out to be a surprisingly colourful and enjoyable novel. Low plays out over a single weekend as Dominic, so freshly bereaved he’s still carrying his wife’s ashes in a white urn, flies on a whim to his native city of Mumbai without packing so much as a change of underwear. His quest is to perform the Hindu rite of immersing his beloved’s ashes in pure and flowing water, none of which is to be found in Delhi. His true destination, though, is oblivion. Flailing in grief and guilt, Dominic gorges on every substance he can lay his hands on. Mumbai being the city whose junkie subsoil Thayil first sifted in Narcopolis, that amounts to a fair few: Dominic ingests cocaine, heroin, sleeping pills, opium, a great deal of alcohol, and, in a rare appearance in literary fiction, the synthetic upper mephedrone or “meow meow”. Continue reading... post comment

Forbidden territory: the best books about land and power [23 Jan 2020|09:58am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/23/forbidden-territory-the-best-books-about-land-and-power As the government plans further limits on our freedom to roam, Guy Shrubsole chooses books to explore how wealth and inequality have shaped our world Recent government proposals to criminalise aspects of trespass have forced the intertwined issues of land and power back into focus. But the question of who owns land in Britain has been bound up with wealth, inequality and exclusion for centuries. Traveller communities are likely to be worst affected by the government’s plans, so a good place to start is Damian Le Bas’s The Stopping Places, a lyrical memoir about life on the road. Le Bas’s journey is a quest to rediscover his Romany roots, and along the way explore the challenges and prejudices facing Travellers. Continue reading... post comment

Pine by Francine Toon review – a chilling gothic thriller [23 Jan 2020|10:00am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/23/pine-by-francine-toon-review The empty house, the dark forest … an atmospheric ghost story set in the Scottish Highlands feels spookily familiar In the dead of winter, along comes a literary gothic thriller to chill the marrow. Francine Toon, a poet and editor, has drawn on memories of growing up in the Scottish Highlands to create a twilit ghost story that inhabits the woods and fells like a secretive wild animal. At the heart of the story is Lauren, aged 10 and a half, living with her father, Niall, in a tiny village near the Moray Firth. Her mother disappeared shortly after she was born, leaving Niall with a painful weight of betrayal that can only be eased with whisky. Lauren keeps catching sight of a gaunt, bruised woman wearing just a white dressing gown against the cold. Others see her too, but forget her the instant she’s gone, leaving Lauren isolated and scared. Toon builds on this setup slowly for about two thirds of the novel, then accelerates into thriller territory. It’s an abrupt shift of gear, but the work she has put into developing the characters ensures that we never lose interest. Continue reading... post comment

Is the word 'polygraph' hiding a bare-faced lie? [23 Jan 2020|11:06am] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/23/steven-pooles-word-of-the-week-polygraph The government wants to subject convicted terrorists to lie-detector tests. But is the polygraph as scientific as it sounds? This week the government announced that it would subject persons convicted of terrorism offences to lie-detector tests before early release. Such tests are known as “polygraphs”, which definitely sounds more scientific. But is it? “Polygraph” comes from the Greek for “much writing”, and in the late 18th and early 19th centuries it denoted someone who wrote vast quantities, as well as a mechanical contraption that enabled the user to write two copies of a letter at once, and so metaphorically a person who resembled someone else in every detail. Continue reading... post comment

One of Them by Michael Cashman review – a heroic and heartbreaking memoir [23 Jan 2020|12:00pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/23/one-of-them-michael-cashman-review-epic-love-pain From a famous gay kiss on EastEnders to a seat in the House of Lords – a powerful account of public life, love and loss We know Michael Cashman, or we think we do: the charmingly fresh-faced, somehow ageless actor who played Colin in EastEnders, was involved in the first gay kiss in a soap opera, became a gay activist then an MEP, and is now a member of the House of Lords. The title of his memoir tells us that his sexuality is central to his identity, and it is true that he has been absolutely fearless in proclaiming it – a particularly brave thing in the late 1980s, and he suffered the scabrous abuse of the tabloid press for it: “EastBenders!” the headlines howled. The News of the World led with “Secret Gay Love of Aids Scare EastEnder”, associating a storyline from the show with Cashman himself. The paper also published his address, which resulted in bricks being thrown through his window. The Sunday Mirror managed to surpass this, confronting him on the doorstep with the claim that he had just come back from the US (he hadn’t) where he had taken an Aids test (he hadn’t), was almost certainly dying of it (he was clearly in radiant good health) and had decided to break off his relationship. He told them to tell his partner, Paul Cottingham, this. They already had, they said, but they didn’t mean him, they meant another lover with whom he was allegedly passionately involved. Continue reading... post comment

Charles Sprawson obituary [23 Jan 2020|03:27pm] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/23/charles-sprawson-obituary Author of Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer As Hero Iris Murdoch called Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer As Hero, Charles Sprawson’s classic memoir, “as zestful as a plunge in champagne”. The book, which was published in 1992 to widespread acclaim, is rich and allusive, melancholy yet often very funny, a work that is as much about the power of language to evoke deep feeling as it is about heroic sporting endeavour. Sprawson, who has died of pneumonia aged 78, completed only this one book – he came to writing late in life and developed vascular dementia before finishing a second (a planned life of the Slovenian endurance swimmer Martin Strel) – but the influence of Haunts of the Black Masseur has been significant and enduring. It was the forerunner of the swimming memoirs that have become a staple of contemporary publishing: he inspired the writing of authors from Amy Liptrot to Roger Deakin to Philip Hoare. Continue reading... post comment

navigation [ viewing | January 23rd, 2020 ] [ go | previous day|next day ]