Tower and Town, November 2020

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A Good Read

Some books lie around in the shop for weeks while I circle around looking at them out of the corner of my eye. Then when I take the plunge and read them I don’t know what took me so long. This month’s treat for me was The Truants by Kate Weinberg. A whodunnit in a university setting,  it’s about obsession, dysfunction, suspicion and, obliquely, Agatha Christie. Slickly plotted and predictable until suddenly it isn’t, I can see why it’s been talked about in the same breath as Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. It stands up well to the comparison, and is likely to end up on the bookshop’s ‘Recommended’ shelves.

You wouldn’t imagine that the world needs another book about John F Kennedy, but Fredrik Logevall has produced a fresh and readable biography of this most mythologised of presidents. If you know nothing about JFK, the book sets out his early life up to his decision to run for president. If you do know about the Kennedy family, the energetic, amoral father, pious mother and nine siblings, this biography will have few surprises, but Logevall takes a clear look at JFK, his relaxed charisma  and his much less appealing qualities – selfish carelessness and a fascination with political manoeuvring which was not always backed up with genuine conviction. On balance though, the author argues the case for JFK being much more his own man than some biographers have shown us, despite the undeniable advantage of the family wealth.

I’m looking forward to Pandora’s Jar  by Natalie Haynes, which examines the female characters in Greek mythology, looking at the way the stories have been retold over the centuries. Natalie Haynes is a novelist, highly entertaining broadcaster and classicist, and her wit and knowledge give a fresh and scholarly perspective to the stories we (think) we know.

 For children, The Good Thieves by Katherine Rundell is an adventure story about righting wrongs. In 1920s New Yorker Vita discovers that her grandfather has been swindled out of his home and all his worldly belongings. Vita meets a group of talented children and persuades them to help her bring about justice. Fun, exciting and all about how working together achieves results.

Debby Guest