Annalena mcafee biography of martin luther king

If there was ever an author whose reputation and considerable skill stands in the way of my critical assessment, Sebastian Barry is he. As someone who has an affinity for Irish novels (see my raving about the work of John McGahern here), there is no doubt that Barry, along with compatriot Colm Toibin (and, yes, many others — those Irish can write, I must say), deserves to be considered with the best of the current generation. And, yet, each time I pick up his latest work, as is the case with On Canaan’s Side, the promise of the first two-thirds of the novel is not delivered in the conclusion. It is a tribute to Barry that that still makes the book “good to very good”; it is a criticism that “excellence” has been missed.

On Canaan’s Side is another “testament” novel, by my count the fourth on this year’s Booker longlist — Julian Barnes, A.D. Miller and Jane Rogers complete the list of novels framed as first-person memoirs by the central character. It is only right to note that Barry employed a similar approach in his last novel, The Secret Scripture, which was widely tipped to win the 2009 Booker and fell short to The White Tiger, apparently much to Barry’s dismay.

So let’s cut right to the chase — the first half of On Canaan’s Side is as good as the first half of any other novel that I have read this year except for Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending. Lilly Bere, the diarist of the novel, is 89 and we know early on that she has decided to end her life when this diary project is done — the book consists of no

Last year I read 12 books — one per month — by the late Irish writer William Trevor(1928-2016) as part of a project I co-hosted with Cathy from 746 Books.

Immersing myself in his work like this, a kind of extended binge read if you will, was a fascinating experience. I learned so much about his writing and yet I still feel I know so little about him as a man. Or do I?

Award-winning writer

Most people associate Trevor with the Booker Prize, for which he received five nominations over the years, but he never took out the top gong. He had better luck with the Whitbread Prize (now known as the Costa Book Awards), winning it three times (for The Children of Dynmouth in 1976, Fools of Fortune in 1983, and Felicia’s Journey in 1994) and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature, which he won once — for his 1965 novel The Old Boys.

He had an honorary CBE and a knighthood too.

But that’s not why I wanted to devote a year to reading his work.

Trevor has an esteemed reputation as a fine chronicler of human life in all its many facets and was regarded as one of the greatest short story writers in the English language. But he didn’t just write short stories. He wrote novels, novellas and plays, too.

Since beginning this blog almost two decades ago, I have read and reviewed a few of his novels and found them heartbreaking (The Story of Lucy Gault), slightly disturbing (Felicia’s Journey and Death in Summer) or gentle depictions of rural life (Love and Summerand Nights at the Alexandra).

It wasn’t until I’d read three of his early novels — The Old Boys (1964), The Boarding House (1965) and The Love Department (1966) — published in one volume, that I understood there was more to Trevor than the melancholy tales I had previously associated him with.

Those early novels were satires, up roaringly funny in places. All were set in London, rather than his na

Non-fiction – paperback; Vintage; 276 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

I have read some interesting and unusual books in my time, but Druin Burch’s Digging Up the Dead must be the most interesting and unusual book I have ever read. Indeed, when I was offered it for review, I had initially been drawn to the dark, Gothic nature of the subject, but hadn’t quite clocked the fact it was a non-fiction title. So when it popped through my door I was slightly taken aback to discover that it was actually a biography. But what a biography it turned out to be!

Digging Up the Dead looks at the life and times of arguably the world’s first famous surgeon, Astley Cooper (1768-1841), whom Burch — himself a medical doctor — describes as vain, egotistical, nepotistic and “rather wonderful”.

Astley was born into a highly educated family — his father was an Oxford-educated vicar, his uncle was senior surgeon at Guy’s Hospital in London — but he showed little interest in books or study but specialised in pranks and adventures. When the family moved to Yarmouth he began training under a local apothecary, who also doubled as a surgeon, in the hope that he might learn enough to follow his older brothers into university and perhaps a physicianship, or his uncle to a hospital and career as a surgeon. He did well and moved on to become an apprentice to a surgeon at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.

When he was fourteen-and-a-half he witnessed a problematic, but successful, operation to remove a stone from a man’s bladder. This was to have a profound influence on him, because it was not long after that he decided to embark on surgical training in London, much to the delight of his family.

In London, his early career got off to a shaky start. He boarded with one of his uncle’s colleagues, Henry Cline, in a “a grand detached residence with stables and outbuildings”