Books I Read in August 2024

My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss is a memoir about the author’s eating disorder which developed during her childhood with a serious relapse during the pandemic. I have enjoyed reading several novels by Moss over the years which often deal with food and illness, and her latest memoir is a complex account about these themes and also addresses control, memory and unreliable narrators. She writes about her emotionally neglectful childhood in Manchester and the books she sought solace in, with some analysis of their depictions of food and femininity. ‘My Good Bright Wolf’ is mostly written in the second person, an unusual style for a memoir and a very powerful one too. The prose is intercut with Moss often berating herself, which sometimes felt relentless and intrusive to read but is very effective at showing the mental toll of anorexia. Many thanks to Pan Macmillan for sending me a review copy via NetGalley.

A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown is not quite as frivolous as the author’s book about Princess Margaret, Ma’am Darling, perhaps reflecting the serious responsibility of the role inherited by her sister in 1952. Undertaking a review of Queen Elizabeth II’s long and eventful life is an enormous task for a biographer, but I was confident that Brown would succeed following the similar scale of his 2020 book One Two Three Four about the Beatles. Over the course of 112 mostly short chapters, Brown focuses on a handful of key events such as the Coronation alongside other aspects of royal life. These include the corgis, the Royal Yacht and a quirky profile of Jeanette Charles, the Essex-based doppelganger who had a career late in life portraying the Queen in numerous films. Given that the Queen was one of the most famous people in the world, her sense of humour and her true views about her subjects remain somewhat mysterious. While many biographies about the Royal Family are either fawning or scathing, ‘A Voyage Around the Queen’ settles for a more balanced and pleasingly tongue-in-cheek view instead. Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for sending me a review copy via NetGalley.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch won the Booker Prize last year, and deservedly so. It is a dystopian novel set in contemporary Ireland following the election of the extreme far-right National Alliance party. Civil war breaks out, and people’s freedoms quickly vanish as society descends into a totalitarian nightmare. Eilish Stack’s husband, Larry, is a senior trade unionist who is interrogated by the FRSB and later disappears at a rally. She must look after their four children and navigate a new chaotic environment with bewilderment and desperation. The most effective dystopian fiction is usually grounded in real events, and ‘Prophet Song’ certainly reflects the horrors of recent wars with an increasing sense of dread towards the powerful conclusion.

Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart is the former Conservative politician’s memoir about the nine years he spent in Parliament as MP for the rural constituency of Penrith and the Border. He later served as a government minister for rural affairs, international development and prisons. Stewart paints memorable portraits of his colleagues, and is particularly scathing about David Cameron, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson. Many others are not named directly, but it is often fairly easy to work out who they are. Political memoirs are often a means for score-settling and legacy building, and Stewart’s high capacity for self-reflection doesn’t make him particularly well suited for the forward-looking mentality required for political leadership. However, he has produced an astutely observed account of the dysfunction within the British political system and why MPs and ministers are often so ineffective in their role.