Roald Dahl lived in a world of children's fantasy, but he was complicated and not all that nice, as a new history of his life (and many others) reveals. Meanwhile, Richard Fidler has come up with a magic formula for his thoughtful works of history, and Daisy Buchanan's new novel is a disappointment, to say the least.
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You can find all the books we've reviewed this week below. And I welcome your thoughts and feedback on what we've been reading. You can reach me by email at sally.pryor@canberratimes.com.au.
A lesson in history, a view to the past
Philippa Gregory loves to immerse herself in history, and write novels based as closely on the facts as possible. Speaking to Karen Hardy about her latest novel, Dawnlands, she describes her process, and says writing around the facts is a joy.
"Everybody's absolutely welcome to take history and do what they like with it, but I like to stay pretty close to the events," she says.
And of deciding to study to history at university after working in journalism, she says, "I realised then that history answers all the existential questions of life, it teaches us everything."
New beginning for veteran artist
Bruni Leti is a veteran artist and, in the world of printmaking, a familiar name. A new book of his work, Fiorenza: Ribbons of Power, edited by Jenny Zimmer, documents Leti's most recent venture that started with a trip to his beloved city of Florence. He has transformed a series of crisp photographs - reproduced in this book - with "painterly gestural marks".
"It is interesting that an artist who made his reputation through wonderful delicate etchings, bold colour saturated monotypes, whimsical relief prints and atmospheric lithographs, at the age of 80 has reinvented himself by embracing digital printmaking," writes reviewer and art critic Sasha Grishin.
Short stories with deceptive emotional depth
"Such descriptions belie the emotional and intellectual depth of this collection," writes Alice Grundy in her review of Bliss Montage.
"The stories don't slip into moralising, in part because of the Ma's sense of humour. ... The themes that cross stories and thoughtful juxtapositions also serve to make the whole greater than the parts."
Fidler's book of well-chosen roads
Broadcaster and author Richard Fidler is building up quite a reputation for enthusiastic and thoughtful works of accessible history, based partly on his own travels, and largely on his own extensive reading. His latest, The Book of Roads and Kingdoms, about the medieval wanderers who travelled out to the edges of the known world during Islam's fabled Golden Age, is no exception.
"It encompasses a period of 700 years, so Fidler has had to decide which historical persons are most relevant to his story and, having made that decision, he then has to decide which events in the chosen persons' lives were the most significant and interesting," writes reviewer Russell Wenholz.
"This, Fidler has done successfully."
Careering into a meaningless romp on the page
Reviewer Amy Walters is disappointed in Careering, the latest novel by Daisy Buchanan, to say the least. It's ostensibly a harmless millennial workplace romp, but Walters expected more.
"Perhaps Buchanan's aim was to point out the pitfalls of 'girlboss' culture, but her more overt forays into feminist debate revolved around intergenerational misunderstandings that are contrived and predictable," she writes.
"The characters are so shallow it is hard to feel anything is at stake."
The positives and negatives of Roald Dahl's life
He's one of the most read and best known names in children's literature, and yet Roald Dahl was often overlooked by the literary establishment. As this new biography by Matthew Dennison demonstrates, Dahl had a complex personality and fraught family life beset by tragedy.
In his review of Teller of the Unexpected, Colin Steele says it compares favourably to other accounts of Dahl's life.
"Dennison provides an up-to-date, compact study, which balances the positives and negatives of Roald Dahl's complex life," he writes.
Mixing magic, history and murder
It's hard to know how to describe the phenomenally successful books by Ben Aaronovitch; fantasy fiction just about sums it up Amongst Our Weapons, but not quite.
"The series, part urban fantasy, part police procedural, features mixed race DC Peter Grant, working in the Folly, a London police unit working on supernatural crimes." Say what?
Colin Steele's own language shifts comfortably in these reviews until it almost sounds normal.
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