What the critics thought of Olivia Laing's The Trip to Echo Spring, Charlotte Higgins's Under Another Sky and Robert Galbraith's The Cuckoo's Calling
"Olivia Laing's To the River was a quiet masterpiece," wrote the Sunday Times's *John Carey*, although "thoughts while walking along the river Ouse might not seem the most thrilling subject for a first book". Her follow-up, The Trip to Echo Spring, shares some of the same preoccupations [but] leaves the Ouse far behind and massively broadens its canvas … Essentially it is a meditation on the lives of six great American literary drunks ... What gives her book its brilliance and originality is the quality of its writing." In the New Statesman, *Talitha Stevenson* applauded the book's "nuanced portrait – via biography, memoir, analyis – of the urge of the hyperarticulate to get raving drunk", comparing Laing's "mix of intellect and intuition" to Janet Malcolm; but she was less enamoured of her visits to "the places where the writers lived, drank and dried out. The journey imposes a stagey narrative that the book could have done without." The Independent's *Gordon Bowker* hinted at reservations too, displaying less enthusiasm (like Carey) for Laing's "occasional plunges into the science of addiction"– the resulting outbreaks of "jargon" disrupt "the poetry of her prose". No caveats were voiced by the Scotsman's *David Stenhouse*, who liked the author's "rare sensitivity and literary insight" in a book that is "a triumphant exercise in creative reading".
Also structured by an authorial odyssey is Charlotte Higgins's Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain, researched (wrote the London Evening Standard's *Richard Hobbs*) via "a journey of discovery with partner Matthew, a battered VW campervan and a seemingly bottomless hamper for picnicking among Roman ruins". Hobbs's verdict – that the book was "special"– was echoed by the Daily Telegraph's *Harry Mount*, who admired the "gentle, fine prose" of a book that "nails down how Roman Roman Britain was" and "suggests convincingly that … modern Britain is still built on a Roman skeleton". The Sunday Times's *Christopher Hart* was still more enthusiastic about "an utterly originally history, lyrically alive to the haunting presence of the past and our strange and familiar ancestors".
No reviewer of Robert Galbraith's The Cuckoo's Calling – now reissued following the revelations that it is not by a man, not by someone with a military background (except in the Wizarding Wars) and not a debut – found it flawless, but the consensus was very favourable. In the Mail on Sunday, *Max Davidson* tut-tutted that "many of the individual scenes are too slow for the book to become a real page-turner", but approved of its hero, heroine, portrayal of London, phrase-making and "well-made plot". For *David Sexton* in the Evening Standard, the drawback was the "clunky, over-descriptive style"; but he liked the story ("much better than [her] bad-tempered social conscience saga A Casual Vacancy") and pronounced her detective Cormoran Strike "a really good series character". In the Sunday Times, *John Dugdale* pounced on "some thumping genre cliches", but similarly overcame such qualms in writing that Rowling's crime novel shows (as The Casual Vacancy failed to do) that "she can renounce magic and yet be magical". Most captivated was the Daily Telegraph's *Jake Kerridge**, *who argued the novel was so clearly "the work of a master story-teller", with other tell-tale signs, that it should have been spotted as her work when originally published. "It is wonderfully fresh and funny," he concluded, and hopefully inaugurates a series "that lasts long enough to make Harry Potter look like a flash in the pan". Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.
"Olivia Laing's To the River was a quiet masterpiece," wrote the Sunday Times's *John Carey*, although "thoughts while walking along the river Ouse might not seem the most thrilling subject for a first book". Her follow-up, The Trip to Echo Spring, shares some of the same preoccupations [but] leaves the Ouse far behind and massively broadens its canvas … Essentially it is a meditation on the lives of six great American literary drunks ... What gives her book its brilliance and originality is the quality of its writing." In the New Statesman, *Talitha Stevenson* applauded the book's "nuanced portrait – via biography, memoir, analyis – of the urge of the hyperarticulate to get raving drunk", comparing Laing's "mix of intellect and intuition" to Janet Malcolm; but she was less enamoured of her visits to "the places where the writers lived, drank and dried out. The journey imposes a stagey narrative that the book could have done without." The Independent's *Gordon Bowker* hinted at reservations too, displaying less enthusiasm (like Carey) for Laing's "occasional plunges into the science of addiction"– the resulting outbreaks of "jargon" disrupt "the poetry of her prose". No caveats were voiced by the Scotsman's *David Stenhouse*, who liked the author's "rare sensitivity and literary insight" in a book that is "a triumphant exercise in creative reading".
Also structured by an authorial odyssey is Charlotte Higgins's Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain, researched (wrote the London Evening Standard's *Richard Hobbs*) via "a journey of discovery with partner Matthew, a battered VW campervan and a seemingly bottomless hamper for picnicking among Roman ruins". Hobbs's verdict – that the book was "special"– was echoed by the Daily Telegraph's *Harry Mount*, who admired the "gentle, fine prose" of a book that "nails down how Roman Roman Britain was" and "suggests convincingly that … modern Britain is still built on a Roman skeleton". The Sunday Times's *Christopher Hart* was still more enthusiastic about "an utterly originally history, lyrically alive to the haunting presence of the past and our strange and familiar ancestors".
No reviewer of Robert Galbraith's The Cuckoo's Calling – now reissued following the revelations that it is not by a man, not by someone with a military background (except in the Wizarding Wars) and not a debut – found it flawless, but the consensus was very favourable. In the Mail on Sunday, *Max Davidson* tut-tutted that "many of the individual scenes are too slow for the book to become a real page-turner", but approved of its hero, heroine, portrayal of London, phrase-making and "well-made plot". For *David Sexton* in the Evening Standard, the drawback was the "clunky, over-descriptive style"; but he liked the story ("much better than [her] bad-tempered social conscience saga A Casual Vacancy") and pronounced her detective Cormoran Strike "a really good series character". In the Sunday Times, *John Dugdale* pounced on "some thumping genre cliches", but similarly overcame such qualms in writing that Rowling's crime novel shows (as The Casual Vacancy failed to do) that "she can renounce magic and yet be magical". Most captivated was the Daily Telegraph's *Jake Kerridge**, *who argued the novel was so clearly "the work of a master story-teller", with other tell-tale signs, that it should have been spotted as her work when originally published. "It is wonderfully fresh and funny," he concluded, and hopefully inaugurates a series "that lasts long enough to make Harry Potter look like a flash in the pan". Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.