The Missing Thread
Daisy Dunn
W&N, £25, pp435
The title of “the next Mary Beard” is one bandied around with wearying predictability, but judging by this terrifically readable and deeply researched new book, Daisy Dunn is in prime position to take up such a mantle. She tells the story of how the classical world, so long discussed through the prism of the men who lived in it, should be reassessed through its influential and fascinating female inhabitants instead. By turns authoritative, witty and revelatory, The Missing Thread feels like a book for our times and for all time.
Table for Two
Amor Towles
Hutchinson Heinemann, £18.99, pp480
Aficionados of Amor Towles’s carefully crafted fiction will be thrilled by this latest collection of elegantly presented short stories along with a novella. The tales focus on vignettes of turn-of-millennium New York life, while the longer Eve in Hollywood sees the reappearance of Rules of Civility’s inimitable Evelyn Ross in 1930s Los Angeles. The recent adaptation of A Gentleman in Moscow has raised the author’s profile to new heights, and long-standing admirers and new readers alike will take great delight in this entertaining collection. A new novel soon please, Mr Towles.
Cinema Speculation
Quentin Tarantino
W&N, £10.99, pp400 (paperback)
Quentin Tarantino has taken delight in polarising opinion throughout his career. For this mash-up of memoir, film criticism and something uncategorisable but unmistakably Tarantinoesque, he brings together his cinematic bugbears and enthusiasms. Discussing everything from the structural flaws of Taxi Driver to his fascination with Deliverance, this is unashamedly opinionated, provocative, often exasperating but never less than diverting writing. Should he really give up directing after his next picture, a career in film journalism surely awaits.
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